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Further Experiments bearing upon the Specific Identity of the 

 Cowslip and Primrose. By Hewett C. Watson, Esq. 



In the second volume of the * Phy tologist ' (Phytol. ii. 217) I re- 

 corded the result of an experiment by sowing the seeds of a plant, so 

 intermediate in its characters between the cowslip and primrose, that 

 it might be held a variety of either or a hybrid of both. The result 

 was, that genuine cowslips, genuine primroses, with various interme- 

 diates, were all produced from the seeds of the one plant. Last year 

 I repeated the experiment; and on the flowering of the young plants, 

 this year, the result is the same. Such precautions were taken as 

 insured an extreme improbability that any seed of a Primula could 

 be lurking in the soil used, or could afterwards be carried to it acci- 

 dentally. This time, a smaller number of seeds vegetated, producing 

 fourteen young plants, now living, after a few deaths in the family. 

 Six only of these young plants have flowered this spring, and on 

 naming them so as to correspond with my former list, the result is 

 numerically thus : — 



True cowslip {Primula veris, Lond. Cat. &c.) - - 1 ' 



Cowslip passing to oxlip (P. vei-is var. major, L. C.) - 



Oxlip (P. vulgaris var. intermedia, L. C.) - - 1 



Caulescent primroses (P. vulgaris var. caidescens, L. C.) - 3 

 True primrose (P. vulgaris, L. C, &c.) - - - 1 



Plants producing no flowers this season - - - 8 



The numerical results will appear better another season, when the 

 flowerless plants of this year may be strong enough to show what 

 they are. 



Coincidently with the preceding, I have tried another experiment, 

 which has produced a result such as I did not at all anticipate ; and 

 which, it may be feared, will make Mr. Marshall still more suspicious 

 that there must have been a " hitch " somewhere in the experiment 

 (See Phytol. ii. 285). I singled out a cowslip, some yards apart from 

 any other Primula in my garden, of vigorous growth, but otherwise a 

 fair average cowslip in flower and leaf The plant was marked while 

 in flower, and ripe seeds afterwards taken and sown, with equal pre- 

 cautions, as in the above case of the oxlip, against intermixture with 

 the seeds of any other Primula. From this sowing I have now 

 twenty-one young plants alive ; but several of them are very small, 

 and only three have produced flowers. As far as can be determined 

 at present, all the young plants possess the ordinary leaves of the 



