LUTHER BURBANK 



in diameter, somewhat as a man is accounted 

 large if he exceeds six feet in height. 



But several of my new giant amaryllis, with 

 their ten-inch spread of petals, are very anom- 

 alous and extraordinary flowers. As I said before, 

 they occupy among flowers a position not very 

 different from that which would be occupied 

 among men by a ten-foot giant. 



If no ten-foot giant has ever appeared, it is 

 probably not so much because the human race 

 does not have potentialities of producing such a 

 specimen, but that experiments in selective breed- 

 ing of men for the quality of size, comparable to 

 the hybridizations that produced the giant ama- 

 ryllis, have never been carried out during a series 

 of generations. 



Breeding Giants 



Everyone has heard of the attempt that was 

 once made by a Prussian king to develop a race 

 of giants by selective breeding. 



As the story goes, the king marshaled all the 

 tall men he could find into a special regiment, and 

 sent inspectors over his kingdom in search of tall 

 women as wives for his tall soldiers. He intended 

 thus to produce a royal bodyguard of giants that 

 should be the astonishment of the world. 



And no one who has followed out a series of 

 experiments in selective breeding of plants, and 



[72] 



