ON HARNESSING HEREDITY 
that the bees make the colors. The flowers which 
grow in the bright light need their brilliance to 
attract the insects; flowers in the shade are more 
easily observed if they are light or white in color: 
it is all a matter of advertising contrast; and, 
throughout ages and ages, each particular flower 
has been striving to perfect a color contrast scheme 
of its own. It may be that the combination of sun 
and soil makes possible brighter colors than the 
combination of shade and soil; but wind-loving 
plants, like corn and trees, which grow in the sun, 
do not bedeck themselves in colors—only the 
flowers which find it necessary to attract the 
insects. 
“In practice, at any rate, the color of a flower 
is one of the reliable guides in the study of its 
life-history.” 
Taking the orange daisy and its white cousin 
side by side, we see at once a family resem- 
blance. The leaf formation, the root formation, 
the arrangement and the number of petals, the 
arrangement of stamens and pistils, bespeak the 
fact that here are two plants of a kind; one orange 
and one white; the white one taller a little, more 
graceful perhaps, and slightly less hardy; but 
cousins, beyond doubt, having within them many 
parallel strains of heredity. 
Let us assume, then, that the orange of the 
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