A FEW OLD FAVORITES 123 



already sufficiently complex in this regard and 

 you will find quite sufficient occupation in at- 

 tempting to sort out new races of a good color or 

 combination of colors, and in fixing a dozen of 

 them so that they will come reasonably true to 

 type. If you succeed in accomplishing this, in 

 the course of a few seasons, you will have per- 

 formed an experiment that you will find full of 

 interest, and your task will not have been carried 

 out without giving you very suggestive sidelights 

 on the problem of heredity. 



It is, in any event, a very curious anomaly that 

 a plant should so have assorted its hereditary 

 factors that they adopt this compromise. And 

 your investigation, which endeavors to determine 

 how accurately the tendency to striping is de- 

 pendent on particular combinations of hereditary 

 factors, will not only prove interesting, but may 

 lead to valuable revelations. The entire problem 

 of the study of heredity of color, notwithstanding 

 the attention that has been given it, still bristles 

 with unanswered questions. Your experiments 

 with the old-fashioned four-o'clock may serve to 

 give you answers to some of them. 



A somewhat simpler but perhaps no less in- 

 teresting problem in color heredity may be 

 taken up in connection with the equally famil- 

 iar columbine. 



