REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS IN THE PRIMULACEE. 85 
genera, favours the opinion that Cortusa has the structure of the 
one form only. Dodecatheon and Soldanella are also perfectly 
fertile when artificially fertilized: neither, however, in general, 
produce much seed in our gardens when fertilization is left to 
the agencies of nature. Dodecatheon is particularly deceptive in 
this respect, and ofttimes dupes the inexperienced collector of its 
seeds in our gardens by producing a profusion of well-formed 
and apparently good capsules destitute of all but the merest ru- 
diments of seeds. In passing, I may remark that these genera 
( Cortusa, Dodecatheon, and Soldanella) afford excellent illustrations 
of a fact particularly emphasized by Mr. Darwin (vide Linn. Journ. 
vol. vii. p. 77), viz., that the fertilization of plants is not indiffer- 
ently dependent on the agencies of insects or the action of the 
wind, inasmuch as they show that in the absence of the insects 
which visit them in their native habitats, or their non-attractive- 
ness to those which frequent their new habitats, the mere action 
of the wind effects little in the economy of their fertilization. 
6. The other genera of the Primulacexw which I have had an op- 
portunity of examining have stamens and pistils of an equal length, 
though occasional specific exceptions are certainly found. The 
Lysimachia nutans (a species referred to the genus Lubinia by 
Link and Otto) I would more particularly refer to in illustration 
of this, and, indeed, as possibly presenting both forms. In the 
single specimen which I have examined, the pistil was included 
within the tube of the corolla; the stamens exserted fully one- 
third beyond the latter! This relative inequality in the length of. 
stamens and pistils is remarkable in a twofold manner—first, on 
considering the very general if not universal equality of the length 
of these organs in the other species of the genus, and secondly, 
from the cireumstance that in this instance the stamens are the 
projecting organs; whereas in all the other representatives of the 
order (which I have examined) exhibiting differences in the length 
of stamens and pistils, I have invariably found that the latter 
organ was the more projected—excepting of course the genus 
Primula, though I strongly suspect that here all the dimorphie 
species are reciprocally so. 
I have now briefly noticed those genera of Primulacez in which 
dimorphism has been observed— Hottonia, Primula, and Gre- 
goria. "These, singularly enough, are arranged by authors in the 
foregoing sequence from recognized structural relations—are 
thus seen to have innate bonds of affinity as manifested by those 
remarkable functional relations of the male and female sexual 
