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fers considerably in botanical character from the remaining districts, 

 as before remarked. The " blue cowslip," as it is here familiarly 

 styled, is one of the earliest of our spring flowers, beginning to blos- 

 som with us in March, and continuing in that state till June, but is 

 in highest perfection about April or beginning of May. The corolla, 

 which is reddish in the bud, first becomes violet, and lastly ultrama- 

 rine blue, of intense brilliancy, but fading ere long into dull blue or 

 purple. Host, Reichenbach and others have unjustifiably made many 

 species out of our P. angustifolia, dependent on the insertion of the 

 stamens, which present two modifications of position. 1st, when the 

 style is elongated so as to exceed the calyx, the filaments spring 

 from the middle of the tube, and are then so shortened as to make 

 the anthers appear nearly sessile ; 2ndly, in such flowers as have the 

 style shorter than the calyx, the filaments are more than doubled in 

 length, the anthers then occupy the top of the tube, are no longer 

 sessile, and have between them five small tufts of erect, pellucid hairs. 

 The same two-fold arrangement of the stamens and difference in the 

 length of the style, is common in Primula and other genera of its na- 

 tural order, between which (Primulaceae) and the present (Boragina- 

 ceae) there are many strong points of affinity. In one or other of 

 these cases, in Primulaceae, at least, the anthers are abortive, and it 

 is probably so in Pulmonaria, as I find the nuts in general very spar- 

 ingly matured, they usually falling away before ripening, and com- 

 monly but one or two of the four are perfected in the same flower 

 under any circumstances. The length of the stamens relatively to 

 that of the tube has no connexion with the dimensions of the latter. 

 When the stamens exceed the tube, the filaments are very apparent, 

 but when the anthers are situated within and below the mouth of the 

 tube, they seem, from the extreme shortness of the filaments, to be 

 quite sessile ; in that case the little fascicles of white hairs occupy 

 their usual place at the upper margin of the throat. These connivent 

 tufts exhibit the rudiments of a valvular structure at their base, and 

 doubtless serve the same purpose as the more perfect valves that 

 close the mouth of the tube in other Boraginaceae, the office of which 

 can scarcely be to protect the anthers from injury, since these are as 

 often above the former as below them.* 



As before remarked, many false species, and even a genus (Bes- 

 sera), have been manufactured out of P. angustifolia. Such are P. 



* The plaits at the orifice of the tuhe in Primula, and the scales which converge 

 over that of Samolus, are analogous to these organs in Boraginaceae. 



