14 



pink-purple, lilac, l)lue-purple, violet and violet-black. 

 But this series does not comprise all the well-known hues 

 of this many colored flower. There are, for instance, 

 varieties of Chrysanthemums as large and as highly 

 developed every way, yet having the entire head com- 

 posed of yellow ligulate petals. Whence then comes this 

 yellow^ variety ? Simply from the fact that Nature is not 

 confined to one inflexible law in regard to the order of 

 development of color, whether in flowers of simple or of 

 complex construction. 



If one examines the central florets of a semi-double yellow 

 flower, it will be seen that upon the change of form to ligu- 

 late, no change whatever is effected in its color, and thus 

 the entire flower in its transformed character from tubular 

 to ligulate remains yellow, not losing that color as in the 

 former series, but on the contrary is very apt to add to it 

 some form of red or even of purple, resulting in many of 

 the most beautiful secondary and tertiary hues known to 

 flowers. This scries would embrace : yellow, straw, orange, 

 scarlet, salmon, purple-brown, maroon and black, and inter- 

 mediate hues with an infinite variety of tints and shades 

 difficult to describe. That this last series of color is not 

 confined to high classed and cultivated flowxrs can be shown 

 by going back to simple Ranunculacefjn, than which none of 

 the polypetalous division are more primitive ; and among 

 the genera, Clematis may be regarded as jierhaps the sim- 

 plest. Here are but a fcAV yello\y flow-ers, none wholly 

 yellow in North America, yet Clematis reticulata, Walt, is 

 said to be pale yellow inside, reddish outside. C. coccinea 

 is scarlet. Aquilegia Canadensis, sometimes yellow, is 

 generally scarlet, except at the tip and within the petals, 

 where it is yellow; A. fiavescens has "sepals sometimes 

 scarlet tinted outside." 



Trollius has two species, deep orange-colored. 



Potentilla Wvi- Rollisson is orange-scarlet, a simple 

 flower of liosacea'. liammadus, or buttercup itself with all 



