GE's Lily

Stanchly protecting his men from demands that they do "something practical," famed Willis Rodney Whitney, longtime (1900-32) head of General Electric Co.'s research laboratories at Schenectady, N. Y., used to say: "I would rather teach than be President." His tradition of free inquiry continues. Consequently by no means all the bulletins that emanate from Schenectady have to do with straightforward improvements in electrical equipment. Lately GE announced a garbage-grinder which would simplify removal of "kitchen waste" by flushing it, chopped fine, down the sink drain. Even farther removed from the usual run of industrial research was last week's report that from GE's laboratories had emerged a new kind of lily, which seemed good enough to patent.

Ordinary regal lilies are dehiscent: the pollen-bearing anthers swell, burst open, shower sticky golden dust on the blossoms, marring their virginal immaculacy. GE's lily, which owes its existence to Engineer Chester Newell Moore, is non-dehiscent. Mr. Moore was experimenting with the effects of x-rays on genes and chromosomes (heredity carriers in the germ-plasm). He irradiated 75 bulbs of regal lilies. Nothing noteworthy happened to the first generation, but among the second-generation freaks were two flowers whose anthers shriveled without releasing their pollen. From these two Engineer Moore obtained a true-breeding strain of non-dehiscent lilies.

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