PREFACE 



the various investigations which have been made upon the 

 anthocyanin pigments along botanical, chemical and genetical 

 lines, no complete account has yet been written. It is the object of 

 this book to provide such an account of the work which has been done. 

 Although it is only within recent years that any very notable researches 

 have been made upon these pigments, I feel that consideration is due 

 to the many workers who, in the course of the last century, have 

 paved the way for their successors. This I offer as my excuse for 

 dwelling in the following pages upon some researches which are now 

 almost entirely superseded. 



I do not pretend to claim that anthocyanins will ever have a great 

 significance from the strictly botanical point of view r . Even when the 

 obscurity which surrounds their physiological functions is elucidated, 

 it can scarcely be expected that they will have a significance in the 

 least comparable, for instance, to that of chlorophyll. From the 

 strictly chemical standpoint, as chemical compounds, they have a 

 certain interest. But I believe it to be in connection with problems 

 of inheritance that they will provide a great and interesting field for 

 research. 



We have now ample evidence that the development in plants of 

 many and various anthocyanin pigments affords an almost unlimited 

 supply of material for the study of inheritance. It must also be patent 

 to those who have been working on the subject of Genetics that 

 a proper conception of the inter-relationships and inheritance of the 

 manifold characters of animals and plants will be greatly facilitated 

 by a knowledge of the chemical substances and reactions of which 

 these characters are largely the outward expression. Herein lies the 



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