PRODUCING A NEW COLOR 299 



It would seem as if we are justified in conclud- 

 ing from the evidence that the hereditary factors 

 for the production of many different pigments 

 are mingled in the germ plasm of any given 

 species of flowering plant. 



If one color predominates over another in the 

 flower, it is because its pigment is dominant over 

 other pigments, and the study of color dominance 

 furnishes interesting side lights on the question 

 of the hereditary transmission of unit characters, 



In the animal world, for example, where the 

 study of the heredity of color has been carried 

 out pretty extensively in recent years, there are 

 interesting combinations showing a somewhat 

 more complex character than any that we have 

 hitherto examined. We have seen that in the 

 case of the guinea pigs black pigment is domi- 

 nant to white, so that when a black guinea pig 

 is mated with a white one the offspring are black, 

 but the recessive trait of whiteness reappears in 

 one in four of the progeny of the second 

 generation. 



But it appears that in these animals, and sim- 

 ilar ones that are subject to wide variation of 

 color, there are curious complexities of heredity, 

 nearly all of which, however, so far as studied, 

 fall within the scheme of "Mendelian" trans- 

 mission. 



