. 74 
Aveust 8TH. 
MR. BENJAMIN LOMAX ON THE COLOURS 
OF PLANTS. 
It had always appeared to him very remarkable that the colours 
of flowers, which formed their chief attraction to the unscientific eye, 
and which had been the lure by which so many had been induced t° 
enter on the study of Botany, should be entirely neglected in 
systematic treatises. That they possessed salient points of great in- 
terest, he trusted to be able to convince them ; and if there appeared, 
at first sight, considerable difficulty in reducing them to a system, that 
difficulty should form an additional incentive to industry on the part 
of those who, like himself, believed that Nature did nothing caprici- 
ously. The first fact with relation to the distribution of colour in 
plants was its profuse variety. Not only was every tint of the 
Prismatic Spectrum represented, but the greatest disparity of colour 
was found to exist between plants otherwise closely related, and 
frequently the most vivid contrasts were presented on the petals of 
the same flower. 
Thus the common butter-cup (ranunculus bulbosus) was of a clear 
yellow, while the adonis, a plant of similar form, habit, and internal 
structure, was of a deep crimson. The two English species of 
Chrysanthemum presented, the one a white, the other a yellow “ ray.” 
The different varieties of vicia (our wild vetch) reflected almost every 
colour of the rainbow, and the little milkwort (polygala vulgaris) 
presented the phenomenon of flowers growing on the same spot, and 
almost from the same root, but differing widely from each other in 
colour, and colour alone. Yet underlying all this variety was another 
law—that of persistency. Centuries passed away—hills sank to 
valleys, and rivers changed their beds—but still the primrose repeated 
its pale tint of yellow, still the violet reflected the azure of the sky. 
Geological and artificial changes might cause species to become appa- 
rently extinct, or favour the production of others hitherto unknown, 
but they could not remove the stripes from the ribbon grass, nor alter 
one spot upon the petals of the orchis. It was true that the horti- 
culturist might, by his art, develop the insignificant matthiola into 
the gorgeous double stock, or the small and uniform dianthus into the 
large and richly variegated carnation, but when his careful hand was 
