THE ASSOCIATION OF CHARACTERS 247 



lings by this mark, thereby being enabled to throw out the 

 " rogues " long before the time of blooming. 



Perennial herbs may show the same correlation. In the 

 colored forms the young shoots which arise from the root- 

 stocks have a dark tinge, but in the white varieties they are 

 pale or colorless. The willow-leaved Veronica (V. longi- 

 folia) affords an instance, which has proven useful in the 

 study of the bud-variations of its hybrids. The hybrids of 

 this plant have the same blue flowers as the parent species, 

 but if one of the parents used for the cross was the white 

 variety, these blue hybrids are apt to produce groups of 

 white flowers. Such groups may consist of a few corollas 

 upon a blue spike, or may form a longitudinal line, leaving 

 the flow T ers on one side uncolored, while those on the other 

 are blue. Or a whole raceme may be white on a plant, whose 

 remaining spikes are of the ordinary color. Lastly, a stem 

 arising from the root may have returned to the type of the 

 white parent.. In these latter cases the color can be pre- 

 dicted from the very first beginning in the growing buds, 

 and the whole stem, with all its branches and leaves will be 

 of a pure green instead of showing the brownish tinge of the 

 species. 



Bulbs of hyacinths may seem to the layman to be all 

 alike, but the breeder is often able to distinguish their varie- 

 ties by their size, the number of their little side bulbs, the 

 form of their top, and especially the color of their outer coats. 

 The correlation betw r een the marks of the dry and market- 

 able bulbs and the characters of the flowers is so highly 

 developed that the Dutch bulb-grower Voorhelm is said to 

 have been able to distinguish more than a thousand varieties 

 of hyacinths solely by inspecting their bulbs. 



Another instance may still be added. It relates to the 

 association of the color in the bracts, the foliage, and the 

 flowers in the flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum). This 



