NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
would be interesting to give an odor to a calla 
upon which he was working. Very carefully 
the plants under test were studied, and at last 
one was found which bore signs of being a 
desirable one to use in furthering the experi- 
ment. Work was at once begun on it. After 
years of study and labor he has bred into a 
scentless calla the odor of the Parma violet, 
the rarest of violet odors. 
One of the many strange incidents occurring 
all through the work which Mr. Burbank 
carries on developed while some of the lily 
tests were under way. One curious lily had 
gone backward into a sad state of total 
depravity, as far as fragrance is concerned. It 
gave forth an odor so powerfully repugnant 
that the people living in a cottage on the 
grounds at Sebastopol near the lily bed, found 
it impossible to endure it. One day before the 
bed was destroyed, Mr. Burbank was sitting 
in the sunshine after his luncheon watching a 
huge buzzard soaring in the blue sky. Sud- 
denly the bird paused in its sweep, poised an 
instant, and then shot down into the bed of 
lilies. It floundered around an instant in the 
bed and then, with, as Mr. Burbank expressed 
182 
