130 NATURE IN A CITY YARD 



themums feverfew, or " featherfew " as a 

 florist calls them are full of sports, singles 

 and doubles, yellows and whites, growing 

 on the same bush. 



If we are surprised by atavism in the 

 human species, there is at least as much 

 reason to be puzzled by the pranks of 

 heredity in plants. Here is a pansy be- 

 low our window that bears blossoms of 

 a royal purple throated with gold. Ex- 

 plain, if you can, why it yields one 

 morning a blossom of white edged with 

 sky-blue. Has some ancestral cross in 

 fertilization, or some parent type, asserted 

 itself again ? The azalea often indeed, 

 usually sports into foreign colors, the 

 red issuing a dozen white blossoms, and 

 vice versa. A double petunia that I got, 

 with a noble, rose-like flower of crimson 

 velvet, turned its blooms into magenta 

 banded with white after getting into our 

 ground, and finally settled into that form. 

 One of our irises, which we soak at the 

 roots in spring to make them remember 

 their marshy habitat, petaling in mauve 

 and white, carried a stalk of deep purple 



