ers, of Canterbury, who has particularly attended to this plant,
that the white variety is the truest. The hyacinth, when propagated by
seed, is extremely inconstant in colour, but "white hyacinths almost
always give by seed white-flowered plants;"[53] and Mr. Masters informs
me that the yellow varieties also reproduce their colour, but of
different shades. On the other hand, pink and blue varieties, the
latter being the natural colour, are not nearly so true: hence, as Mr.
Masters has remarked to me, "we see that a garden variety may acquire a
more permanent habit than a natural species;" but it should have been
added, that this occurs under cultivation, and therefore under changed
conditions.

With many flowers, especially perennials, nothing can be more
fluctuating than the colour of the seedlings, as is notoriously the
case with verbenas, carnations, dahlias, cinerarias, and others.[54] I
sowed seed of twelve {21} named varieties of Snapdragon (_Antirrhinum
majus_), and utter confusion was the result. In most cases the
extremely fluctuating colour of seedling plants is probably in chief
part due to crosses between differently-coloured varieties during
previous generations. It is almost certain that this is the case with
the polyanthus and coloured primrose (_Primula veris_ and _vulgaris_),
from their reciprocally dimorphic structure;[55] and these are plants
which florists speak of as never come true by seed: but if care be
taken to prevent crossing, neither species is by any means very
inconstant in colour; thus I raised twenty-three plants from a purple
primrose, fertilised by Mr. J. Scott with its own pollen, and eighteen
came up purple of different shades, and only five reverted to the
ordinary yellow colour: again, I raised twenty plants from a bright-red
cowslip, similarly treated by Mr. Scott, and every one perfectly
resembled its parent in colour, as likewise did, with the exception of
a single plant, 73 grandchildren. Even with the most variable flowers,
it is probable that each delicate shade of colour might be permanently
fixed so as to be transmitted by seed, by cultivation in the same soil,
by long-continued selection, and especially by the prevention of
crosses. I infer this from certain annual larkspurs (_Delphinium
consolida_ and _ajacis_), of which common seedlings pr