156 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS. 
as the Wilmington specimens, This again is proof that it was found 
wild in South Carolina about seventy years ago, and therefore long 
antedating the period when our modern hybridisers first touched the 
group. Here it may be said that in February of 1904 I made an extended 
but rather hasty examination of the Chesterfield region. Though both 
parents were in great quantity, no traces of the hybrid were obtained. 
The season of the year was unfavourable for easy observation, but the . 
locality deserves careful study. 
It can now be definitely stated that Elliott’s plant S. Catesbei was a 
natural hybrid, not a species, and accordingly his name should be 
retained for the same hybrid combination, whether natural or artificial. 
It is thus necessary to secure a name for the very distinct species which 
centres round the middle Gulf States, and which the writer treated of in 
the article already quoted. He now proposes Sarracenia Sledget, in 
honour of Dr. Sledge of Mobile, Ala., who first forwarded abundant 
material for culture and study about three years ago. 
Last summer the writer botanised round the small village of Ponce 
de Leon in North-Central Florida. Everywhere S. flava and S. purpurea 
were abundant, but interspersed among them were so many hybrids, that 
ina single day’s botanising 117 examples were counted. In some instances 
the plants were rather isolated, in others they were thickly dotted round, 
as if the product of a single seed-pod. Now both parent species, though 
very constant in general morphology, showed marked variations in size 
and particularly in colour. Needless to say, like variations were constantly 
observed in the hybrids. Nineteen plants were selected at random during 
the day’s excursion, and forwarded to the Botanic Garden of the University 
of Pennsylvania. Most of these flowered in the Sarracenia house during 
the past spring, and it may well be emphasised that for delicacy and 
variety of colour combination, as well as for size and form of the flower, 
this is decidedly the finest hybrid of the genus. 
Several specimens were collected that suggested their being second 
hybrids, in both generations of which S. flava was a parent. ‘Two of 
these bloomed during the past spring, and demonstrated the correctness 
of the surmise. 
But in the Ponce de Leon locality, S. pszttacina was even more 
abundant than S. flava and S. purpurea, so much so, that one with regret 
trampled over it at every step in the swampy ground. Careful search 
failed to reveal a single hybrid between S. psittacina and the other species 
around. In slight part such may be due to the later blooming of this, as 
compared with the other two species, but such does not seem to be the 
entire explanation. More likely it is that, from differences in the size and 
structure of the flower, they are visited by different types of insect. That 
such a hybrid combination as that between S. purpurea and S. psittacina 
is possible, has been demonstrated by its first appearance as S. Courtti 
from Mr. Veitch’s nursery, by its later production by Mr. Oliver, of the 
Washington Botanic Garden, and its recent production at our Botanic 
Garden. 
The relative geographical distribution of S. psittacina and S. minor 
(S. variolaris) gives only a moderate opportunity for the crossing of these 
species, since the latter is confined to the Atlantic coastal plain, and the 
