Primrose, Oxlip, Cowslip, and Polyanthus. 407 
complished naturalist possesses in so great perfection, and to 
persuade us that it is not unlikely that this will, after all, prove 
to be of little or no value towards the final solution of the 
question. It should now seem that nothing but the multiplied 
results of direct and accurate experiment can be allowed to 
form the basis of our speculations in this, any more than in 
every other department, of science. One well authenticated 
fact will easily shake the most specious conjectures ; and, if we 
do not listen to Nature when she is taking her own method of 
opening to us her mysteries, we may be assured that we have 
that spirit within which would rather be led by its own fancies 
than bow even to the still higher authority by which Nature is 
herself directed. Cultivation, we know, produces numerous 
and very strange varieties of the same species; and, what 
seems highly remarkable, these varieties, when once esta- 
blished, frequently continue permanent through a succession 
of crops raised from them by seed, except now and then, 
where an accidental return to what is considered to be the 
original stock takes place. ‘Thus, to pass over the thousand 
well known cases among our culinary plants, we find many 
fo} 
seedlings of the variegated sycamore striped like the parent 
plant, though some of the same crop have lost this character. 
But if it is no sure test, that a given form should cause an in- 
dividual to rank as a distinct species, merely because we find 
that form can be propagated unaltered by seed; still less is it 
any clue to the accurate discrimination of species, that the same 
character should have been retained by the same individual 
for many years. On the other hand, however, it is clear that 
one single instance of change from one form to another, whe- 
ther produced by seed or culture of the individual, if well 
established, is quite sufficient to reduce any two of the most 
permanent forms to the subordinate station of mutual varieties. 
What has been hitherto recorded of the production of hy- 
brids, has rather thrown confusion than order in the way of 
this enquiry. ‘The parents of many of these supposed hy- 
brids may, after all, turn out to be no more than mere varie- 
ties of the same, though, in some instances, they have, in all 
probability, belonged to different species. What the law of 
nature in this respect really is, we can hardly be said to have 
ascertained. If we search for analogy in the neighbourin 
study of entomology, we shall find that it is only very lately 
that entomologists have ascertained that the nineteen varieties 
of Coccinélla variabilis, mentioned in Stephens’s Catalogue as 
found in Great Britain, form only a single species. Mr. Stephens 
has recorded a similar reduction in the nineteen British varie- 
ties of Coccinélla mutabilis, each of which was formerly consi- 
