1914-15.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 303 



to gardening plants from the flora of China, and should 

 the expectation I hold out be realised, this introduction by 

 Messrs. Bees, Ltd., through their collector George Forrest, 

 will be not the least of their services to horticulture. 



The plant I speak of was introduced as P. Listeri, 

 King. It is not, however, the Indian plant, which is 

 not yet certainly in cultivation, but a microform inter- 

 mediate to P. obconica, Hance, and P. Listeri, King. It is 

 now named P. sinolisteri, Balf. fil. 



In dealing with the type of obconica — or better, 

 obconico- Listeri — amongst primulas, as I propose, I am 

 conscious that the material which I have been privileged 

 to examine — rich though it be — is by no means sufficient 

 to justify a conclusive discrimination of the forms of the 

 type spread over the area from which it is known, nor to 

 determine their relations to habitat and to one another. 

 There is not indeed in all the herbaria of the world 

 material as yet accumulated adequate for this, and it 

 will be long before this stage of satisfactory aggregation 

 is reached. To await accessions before publishing results 

 of such anaWsis as is possible now would mean sacrificing 

 an occasion for emphasising the fact that P. obconica, 

 Hance, is not in all its forms a hurtful plant, and of 

 recording some other facts which are contributions to 

 natural knowledge. I therefore present a series of 

 illustrations of this obconico- Listeri type, and will explain 

 the conclusions to which they seem to me to lead. 



Plate XXI shows the type-specimen of Hance's descrip- 

 tion now in the Herbarium of the British Museum. I have 

 to thank Dr. Rendle, Keeper of the Department of Botany 

 of the British Museum, for his kind permission to have the 

 photograph taken and to reproduce it here. 



In Plate XXII we have a figure of a plant collected by 

 Wilson (No. 121) at S. Wushan, and Plate XXIII shows 

 a specimen in the Paris Herbarium collected by Delavay 

 (No. 317 bis) on the banks of the Blue River (i.e. the 

 Yangtze) 1 at Che-pa-to in Szechwan. S. Wushan and 



1 I am indebted to Mr. Brewitt Taylor of the Chinese Maritime 

 Customs for the information that the Blue River of French writers is 

 the Yangtze. 



