306 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Sess. lxxix. 



The whole summit may break off, or the style may be 

 detached with a portion of the summit, leaving a central 

 hole for escape of the seeds. 



The vestiture of hairs possessed by the plant calls for 

 special notice. The petioles are densely clad in a villous 

 fashion with long articulate hairs which are sometimes 

 white, sometimes brown — the joints in the dried plant 

 showing markedly a brown or reddish coloration. These 

 hairs extend along the main veins of the leaf and may give 

 a ciliate edging to it, but here the hairs are shorter. They 

 do not occur upon the upper surface of the leaf, or upon the 

 under surface, apart from the veins. These areas are, how- 

 ever, coated by short scabrid hairs which tend to disappear 

 in the older leaves, and the upper surface then becomes 

 quite glabrous. On the scape the long hairs occur in 

 particular about its base, and there may be present also 

 the short hairs, so that the scape is pubescent, or it may be 

 nearly glabrous. The bracts, pedicels, and calyx are 

 pubescent ; in the forms I am dealing with I find no long 

 hairs upon them. The outside of the corolla is also 

 puberulous more or less. 



Keeping this before us as the type of P. obconica, Hance, 

 growing in the gorges of the Yangtze as it passes through 

 Hupeh, let us now look at the Himalayan plant P. Listeri, 

 King. 



This plant (Plate XXVI) was discovered by Mr. J. L. 

 Lister at an elevation of 9000 feet on the south-west side 

 of Tongloo, South- Western Sikkim, on 7th May 1877. To 

 it Sir George King attached the name of the discoverer, and 

 the description of the species was published by Sir Joseph 

 Hooker 1 in 1882. 



1 Hook, f., in Flor. Brit. Ind., iii (1882), 485. "Primula Listeri, 

 King MS. ; pubescent, not mealy, rootstock woody, leaves 1-1^ in., 

 orbicular-cordate sinuate-lobed, entire or denticulate, very membranous, 

 petiole equalling the blade or longer, very slender, scapes shorter than 

 the petiole, few-fld., bracts few, linear, calyx campanulate, lobes broad 

 short, corolla rose-pink, tube funnel-shaped, mouth not annulate. 



" Sikkim Himalaya ; Tonglo and the Singalelah ranges, in bamboo 

 jungles, alt. 9-10,000 ft. 



" I retain the species as distinct from P. filipes with great doubt, 

 having very imperfect specimens of this last ; it differs chiefly in the 

 more orbicular lobulate leaves, broader calyx, and much shorter, more 

 funnel-shaped corolla-tube. Petiole with a very short small sheath, 



