THE BEE AND The EEOWER 
69 
pansies have no scent at all—he grew deep-colored roses, 
great enormous daisies, double clematis, wide petaled 
poppies, and a host of lilies never seen before. 
“Can my thoughts be imagined,” wrote Burbank, “after 
many years of patient care and labor (he had been work¬ 
ing over sixteen years) as, walking among my new 
lilies on a dewy morning, I look upon these new forms of 
beauty, on which other eyes have never gazed? Here 
is a plant six feet high, with yellow flowers, beside it 
one only six inches high with dark red flowers, and fur¬ 
ther on one of pale straw, or snowy white, or with curi¬ 
ous dots and shadings; some deliciously fragrant, others 
partly so; some with upright, others with nodding flow¬ 
ers; some with dark green, woolly leaves in whorls, or 
with polished light green, lance-like, scattered leaves.” 
Burbank strolls along his garden walk, pausing here 
and there to enjoy the fragrance of some lovely blossom. 
At the turn of the path he comes upon a clump of Sweet 
William raising their modest heads alongside the tall, 
graceful stems of a bed of white carnations. 
“What a rare combination that would be,” thinks Mr. 
Burbank, “Carnations and Sweet William! I believe I’ll 
try it!” 
So from the Sweet William he cuts away the stamens 
before the pollen is ripe enough to fall, and he ties up the 
flower in a paper bag so that no other pollen can reach 
