APRIL. 63 



where scarcely any difference exists ; so it comes 

 rather as a surprise to learn that botanists confess 

 themselves unable to draw a distinction between the 

 primrose and the cowslip ! Every village school- 

 child could show them the difference in colour, shape, 

 and arrangement, both of leaf and flower. But sup- 

 pose you find a shady wood full of primroses, leading 

 down to a rich hollow where oxlips a kind of glori- 

 fied cowslip grow, and this, in turn, sloping up to a 

 pasture where cowslips abound, if you examine the 

 ground on each side of the oxlip haunt, you may find 

 some plants so like cowslips that you cannot tell the 

 difference, and on the other side plants which are 

 exactly midway between oxlip and primrose. You 

 might expect at first that there could be no means 

 of " splitting " so uncompromising a difference as 

 shown in the habit of oxlip and cowslip to bear their 

 flowers in a bunch, as it were, at the top of a single 

 stalk, while the primrose seems to supply a separate 

 stalk to each flower; but the half-and-half plants 

 get over the difficulty by producing their first lot of 

 flowers on apparently single stalks, thus showing that 

 they are primroses, and then, by sending up one 

 strong stalk with a lot of flowers branching from the 

 top, showing that they are not primroses. 



"PRIMLIPS AND COWSROSES." 



It is rather curious that the primrose, whose name 

 suggests propriety and prudery, should cause the 

 genealogists of the vegetable kingdom all this trouble 

 to sort out its mixed connections by marriage ; because 

 the primrose is more often quoted than any other 



