142 Atavism. 
pale with no more than the faintest indication of the 
lilac color. The seeds were sown in pans in the autumn, 
the seedlings were pricked out in November and planted 
out in April 1898 on a large bed. In June 250 individ- 
uals flowered, and the percentage composition of the 
color, as given above, was determined. Then the four 
lilac individuals falling into the group Lo were taken 
up and transplanted with all possible care to the metal 
gauze greenhouse. Before doing so all open flowers 
and young fruits were of course removed. It may be 
noted that in this experiment the lilac flowered individ- 
uals began to flower conspicuously later than the pale 
and violet ones. 
The seeds of these four plants were sown partly in 
October and partly in November, separately for each 
parent. Only one of the four resultant groups flowered 
in the following year (1899) ; the rest remained in the 
rosette stage and flowered in 1900. The proportions 
of the various colors were very much the same in the 
four groups. I recorded them separately but did not 
find any significant differences. The numbers in the 
first column (1st Experiment, 5th Gen.) on the table 
on page 140 give the composition of the whole culture. 
I transplanted some lilac plants of the first crop 
(1895), but only kept one of them which caught my eye 
with its beautifully striped flowers. It grew up into a 
sturdy plant, flowered in 1898 in an isolated spot and 
set an abundance of seed. From this 219 flowering 
o 
plants were raised in 1899, and their colors are recorded 
in the last column of the table on page 140 (2d Experi- 
ment, 3d Gen.). 
If we consider the results of these experiments, ex- 
