LUTHER BURBANK 



it will be found that there are still a good many 

 specimens that tend to revert to the more familiar 

 colors. But the effort to establish the blue variety 

 as a fixed type through inbreeding and selection 

 is still under way, and success is assured. 



Were the poppy a plant that is propagated by 

 root cuttings or any other of the common modes 

 of division, the blue variety would long since have 

 been given to the world. But as it is necessary 

 with this plant to develop the variety until it will 

 breed true from seed, I have been obliged to con- 

 tinue the experiment at least ten years longer than 

 would otherwise have been necessary. 



Now, however, it may fairly be said that the 

 experiment has approached completion. The blue 

 poppy is an accomplished fact. Its production 

 constitutes one of the most striking color modifica- 

 tions hitherto made through artificial selection. 

 Creation or Reversion? 



So far as is known, there was never an ancestor 

 of the Shirley poppy that was blue. So here we 

 have an illustration of an experiment that is rad- 

 ically different from any that we hitherto have 

 had occasion to examine. 



We may suppose, to be sure, that the condition 

 of blue pigment is one that occurred in some very 

 remote ancestor of the new poppy. Otherwise we 

 could not account for the presence of the heredi- 



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