146 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



can relapse. White flowers, again, seldom vary, 

 though now and again there is a tendency to revert to 

 the earlier stage of yellow. Thus the wild radish, 

 which has normally a white or pale lilac flower, will 

 sometimes be found on the seashore with yellow petals, 

 and not long since there was sent me from the neigh- 

 bourhood of Winchester a specimen of the wild privet 

 with distinctly yellow flowers. 



In some instances it would seem that the colour of a 

 species has not yet had time to fix itself. A striking 

 example is the beautiful little milkwort, so abundant 

 on some of our chalk downs. White, pink and blue 

 flowers seem almost equally common. Here pink may 

 fairly be regarded as the normal hue, while the white 

 is doubtless due to reversion and the blue to progres- 

 sive modification. The same explanation is probably 

 right with regard to the wild columbine. The old 

 botanist, Robert Turner, records having found "both 

 the white and the purple growing wilde in our meadows 

 in Hampshire, in a place called Gassen mead in Hoi- 

 shot," and I have frequently found blue specimens near 

 Petersfield. The wild larkspur is another illustration, 

 and the flowers vary between pink and white and blue. 



It is seldom, however, that we find any species of 

 wild flower habitually producing this range of colour. 

 Usually in a wild state the reversion is simply to white. 

 I have already alluded to white heather, and indeed 

 all the purple heaths show a like tendency. The same 

 is true of the beautiful pink musk-mallow, not un- 

 common along our Hampshire hedgerows, and of the 

 soapwort, a rare and handsome species. All the Ger- 

 aniums occasionally produce white or very pale flowers, 

 and with the common stork's-bill the tendency is quite 



