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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXXVII. 



men which could be considered as the type of the plant described 

 by him in the Hortus Cliffortianus has been kindly furnished by 

 Dr. A. B. Rendle of the British Museum, and although the flow- 

 ers are somewhat smaller than those of the living plants of ffi. 

 lamarckiana as grown in the New York Botanical Garden nurs- 

 eries, yet the general characters are identical, notably that of 

 the entire or slightly emarginate petals. This character is cer- 

 tainly not typical of the wild weed-like CE. biennis of waste lands 



Fig. 4. — CEtwthera lamarckiana. Adult rosette immediately preceding development of flow- 

 ering stem. Photograph of living plant taken from directly above. (See Figs. 5 and 6.) 



in North America to-day. In any case it seems extremely doubt- 

 ful that all these cultivated evening primroses should be referred 

 to so ungainly and unornamental a plant as CE. biennis. 



Prof. deVries in an article on the introduction of OZ. lamarck- 

 iana in Holland (Ned. Kruidk. Arch. ser. 2, Vol. 6, p. 579, 

 1895) gives a long and detailed history of the ancestors of the 

 plants taken into cultivation for his experiments. They were 

 traced to plants escaped from cultivation and originally raised 

 from seed received from a seedsman of Erfurt, Germany. Prof. 



