Primulas 



lost sight of it for many years, till, staying at her old 

 home Great Tew, one of the children came to say good- 

 night and carried a bunch of Cowslips, among them the 

 orange one. " Don't take that dear child to bed, Nurse, 

 until she has found the plant she picked these from, and 

 put in a stick beside it," said this imperious old lady, and 

 as she was generally obeyed the Cowslip found its way to 

 her charming garden at Goldenfield and thence to me. 

 " Pick out the best you can see," she bade me ; " they won't 

 all come true, but you might as well start with the best 

 form," and I greatly treasure this memento of her generosity 

 and happy days at Goldenfield. A silver Cowslip of palest 

 yellow Canon Ellacombe gave me, and other interesting 

 forms are due to my always collecting a plant or two from 

 every alpine district in which I meet with it. Most of them 

 are the form known asColumnae,with cordate leaves on long 

 petioles and flowers approaching P. elatior. On Mt. Cenis 

 one finds every sort of intermediate, and a botanist might 

 spend years there cataloguing their variations. Elatior 

 itself has overrun a portion of the rock garden, but is so 

 charming it may keep on running as long as Charlies Aunt. 

 There have been bold men who declared true elatior 

 never hybridised, but Mr. Wolley-Dod gave me some living 

 proofs that such statements were inaccurate, for these 

 plants have elatior form but the colouring of various red 

 and pink Primroses, and I myself have found several seed- 

 lings with flowers bearing traces of Primrose characters. 

 Pax and Knuth give no less than two pages to the various 

 hybrid forms due to its liaisons with P. acaulis and P. 

 officinalis. One of them, P. anisiaca, has been praised for 

 its floriferous character by Mr. Farrer, and he kindly gave 



