42 Variation of Plants under Cultivation. 



If we accept, as I suppose we are bound to do, the theory 

 that the flower is merely the modification of the leaf of the plant, 

 we are almost irresistibly forced to come to the conclusion that 

 every colour to be found among- flowering plants can be pro- 

 duced in any other genus or species. Daring as this conclusion 

 may seem when we consider the colour limitations which exist at 

 present in some plants, I think we can hardly escape from this 

 conviction, distant as may appear its realisation in the case of 

 some genera. 



Let us take, for example, the Galanthus, or Snowdrop, as a 

 familiar plant, whose blossoms are known to all. Its general 

 colours are white and green. There is a form which may either 

 be a reversion to the primitive flower or some survival which has 

 not been subject to precisely the same influences. This has its 

 flowers almost entirely green. There are other Snowdrops, again, 

 which have only the inner segments almost entirely green, and 

 which might possibly be looked upon as representing another 

 stage in the progress of change in colouring. The normal Snow- 

 drop, as it is known in this country, has white flowers, with a few 

 green interior markings only, and with a green ovary. But there 

 are others still, which are almost free from these green markings, 

 and are really all pure white, with the exception of the ovary. 

 There is said to have been a Pink Snowdrop, though the tales 

 about it seem rather apocryphal. Yet it would be rash to assert 

 that such a flower was never in existence, and it would be unsafe 

 to say that such a thing is incredible for the future. We have, 

 however, in the Snowdrop with yellow markings and a yellow 

 ovary, a witness to the chances of further variations. It is true 

 that we have not yet fixed this colouring in the seedlings, but that 

 it can be done is almost a certainty, and there is really little 

 reason to doubt the possibility of extending the yellow of the 

 markings and ovary to the flower as a whole. That this is not im- 

 possible even with these flowers, which are, as it were, not so high 

 in the evolutionary sc^le as others, may be seen from the Narcissus. 

 Whether the Xarcissus was yellow or white when it made its first 

 break from the presumedly original green we can only conjec- 

 ture, but we know that it is now giving us a wide range of 

 colouring, and that a Scarlet Narcissus is within measurable 

 distance. The narrow saffron margin round the cup of some 

 flowers has deepened into scarlet; the cup itself has been induced 



