THE AURICULA. 437 
some a paler yellow, and others of a deeper tint; and, what is even more 
unusual, a variety has been produced with dark red flowers and one 
yellow blossom on the same truss. I have also produced many seedlings 
from the edged flowers without the dark ground colour. They have a 
yellow ground in place of the very dark red or maroon, with a green, grey, 
or white margin, and these greatly resemble the auriculas described in 
the herbals of the seventeenth century. There were many careful culti- 
vators of garden flowers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and 
hybridising was understood and practised. Much good work might have 
been done and no record made of it. In these enlightened days the 
horticultural weekly papers are glad to receive and record everything 
worthy of note, but there were none in those days, and no Royal 
Horticultural Society to give certificates: the work was handed down 
from one generation to another; how it was done we are left to con- 
jecture. Before the conference of 1886 was held I looked up every 
species and variety of Primula that might have been the parents of the 
garden auricula. The “Botanical Magazine” contains a good coloured 
plate of P. Palinuri, 3414. It has golden-yellow flowers. Mr. G. C. 
Churchill alluded to this plant in a paper written subsequently and 
published in the “ Gardeners’ Chronicle,’ May 1, 1886, p. 562. P. Awri- 
cula was figured in the “ Botanical Magazine,” tab. 6887. 
