9S 
already showed reversion to the 5-parted calyx type, as 
distinguished from the 10-parted calyx type, a character specially 
remarked fa and figured by Lindley. 
The name P. praemitens was evidently published a few months 
before Pp. sinensis, for Ker gives as a reason for not using P. 
sinensis the fact that the name had already been used by Loureiro 
n the Flora Cochinchinensis for another Chinese plant which 
might or might not belong to the genus Primula. It is to be 
regretted that the International Congress of Botanists at Vienna 
in 1905 did not consider the needs of horticulturists when formu- 
lating their rules and recommendations of botanical nomenclature. 
If they had done so they would surely have drawn up a list of 
nomina conservanda for well-known and generally accepted 
specific names of garden plants, amongst which would certainly 
have been included that of Primula sinensis. Who now wants 
to call this plant P. praenitens Ker, because the latter name was 
published a few months earlier, or because the name P. sinensis 
had already been used by Loureiro for another Chinese species, 
which has remained in obscurity ever since? Even Pax, the 
monographer of the genus in Engler’s Pflanzenreich, has in this 
instance waived the rule of priority in favour of the generally 
accepted name, and it is to be hoped that all botanists will 
continue to follow him. 
The task of following the fortunes of P. sinensis and its 
multitude of forms from its introduction to the present day 
is not within the scope of the present paper. For further in- 
formation the reader is referred to Mr. A. W. Sutton’s compre- 
hensive paper on the subject in the Journal of the Royal Horti- 
cultural Society, n. ser. 13: 99-114 (1891). During the hundred 
years of its cultivation it has remained one of the chief ornaments 
of our greenhouses during the winter months, and in order fully 
to appreciate the great range of variability of this remarkable 
species a visit should be paid to the John Innes Horticultural 
Institution at Merton, where Dr. W. Bateson, F.R.S., has a 
large greenhouse entirely devoted to the species. 
Our chief concern is rather with the so-called wild form of 
Primula sinensis. Apparently Hance was responsible for first 
considering an Ichang plant to be the wild form of P. sinensis ; 
the specimen he determined was collected a T. Watters in 
1879, and the identification appeared in Hance’s paper entitled 
a Diagnoses of New and Habitats of Rare or Hitherto Unrecorded 
Chinese Plants ” in the Journ. of Bot. 1880: 262. A few years 
later Franchet made a similar and apparently independent 
determination of a plant collected near Ichang by Delavay, for 
we have in the Kew Herbarium a wild specimen definitely named 
P. sinensis Lindl., collected by Delavay (No. 316) on 11th of 
March 1882, and communicated to Kew in April 1886. The 
first specimen received from Prof. A. Henry arrived at Kew 
in March 1886, but being fragmentary it was evidently not deter- 
mined until several years later when Dr. Hemsley revised the 
