CHANGING THE COLORS OF FLOWERS BY CULTIVATION. 383 
And what have sun and shadow left to us ? 
What glorious picture in this marble frame 
Ever, as soundless centuries roll by, 
Gives this lone mount its proudest, dearest fame ? 
The sculptured legend on yon polished cliff 
Has lost its meaning. Persia, gray and old, 
Upon her bed of roses sleeps away 
The ages, all her tales of triumph told. 
But here Queen Esther stood ; and still the World, 
In vision rapt, beholds that peerless face, 
When with a smile which won a throne, she gave 
Joy to her king and freedom to her race. 
— October Atlantic. 
CHANGING THE COLORS OF FLOWERS BY CULTIVATION. 
Our knowledge of the chemistry of vegetable pigments is not yet sufficiently 
advanced, for which reason the effect of artificial influence upon the color-tone 
of flowers has not yet received its merited attention. According to my view, 
tannin is an important factor in the generation of vegetable colors ; it is found in 
almost every plant, the petals not excepted, and by the action of the most vary- 
ing reagents — alkalies, earths, metallic salts, etc. — it assumes the most manifold 
hues from pale rose to deep black. A darker color, therefore, is produced in 
flowers rich in tannin, when manured with iron salts, since, as everybody knows, 
tannin and iron-salts dye black, and produce ink. A practical use has been 
made of this fact in the raising of hortensias and dahlias. The former, which in 
ordinary soil blossomed pale-red, became sky-blue when transplanted into soil 
heavily manured with iron-ochre, or when occasionally watered with a dilute alum 
solution. English gardeners succeeded in growing black dahlias by similar man- 
ipulations. It is well known to every florist that a change of location, that is, a 
change of hght, temperature, and soil (replanting) occasionally produces new 
colors, whence it may be deduced that an interrupted nutrition of the flower may, 
under circumstances, effect a change of color. We see no valid reason why the 
well-authenticated fact of the change of color produced by manuring with iron- 
oxide, thereby changing the nutrition of the plant, should not be practically em- 
ployed by the hot-hous gardener. Another very singular and successful experi- 
ment, in producing a change of color in a bird, has recently been made. A 
breeder of canary-birds conceived the idea of feeding a young bird with a mix- 
ture of steeped bread and finely pulverized red Cayenne pepper. Without injur- 
ing the bird, the pigment of the spice passed into the blood, and dyed its plumage 
deep red. The celebrated ornithologist Russ believes that the color of the plum_ 
