The Anthocyanin Pigments of Plants #228976

F the various investigations which have been made upon the anthocyanin pigments along botanical, chemical and genetical lines, no complete account has yet been written. It is the object of this book to provide such an account of the work which has been done. Although it is only within recent years that any very notable researches have been made upon these pigments, I feel that consideration is due to the many workers who, in the course of the last century, have paved the way for their successors. This I offer as my excuse for dwelling in the following pages upon some researches which are now almost entirely superseded. I do not pretend to claim that anthocyanins will ever have a great significance from the strictly botanical point of View. Even when the obscurity which surrounds their physiological functions is elucidated, it can scarcely be expected that they will have a significance in the least comparable, for instance, to that of chlorophyll. From the strictly chemical standpoint, as chemical compounds, they have a certain interest. But I believe it to be in connection with problems of inheritance that they will provide a great and interesting field for research.