408 Specific Identity of the 
dered as a distinct species. Further experience may, therefore, 
in due time, furnish the botanist also with some satisfactory 
test for the reduction of his species. 
My own attention has been more particularly excited on 
this subject, by. finding myself unexpectedly obliged to submit 
to the old opinion of ‘Linneeus, i in contradiction to that enter- 
tained by most modern botanists, that the primrose, oxlip, 
cowslip, and polyanthus are only varieties of one species. 
Upon what Linnzeus founded his opinion, I know not ; but, in 
vol. iv. p. 19. of the Horticultural Transactions, in a paper by 
the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, on the production of hybrids, 
there is recorded an experiment (which I see you have alluded 
to in your Encyclopedia of Gardening) so directly to the pur- 
pose, that no one who trusts to its accuracy can possibly resist 
its evidence. Mr. Herbert remarks: — “ I raised, from the 
natural seed of one umbel of a highly manured red cowslip, 
a primrose, a cowslip, oxlips of the usual and other colours, a 
black polyanthus, a hose-in-hose cowslip, and a natural prim- 
rose bearing its flower on a polyanthus stalk. From the seed of 
that very hose-in-hose cowslip I have since raised a hose-in- 
hose primrose. _I therefore consider all these to be only local 
varieties, depending upon soil and situation.” I confess that 
I had myself given very little credit to this experiment of 
Mr. Herbert’s, until it was recalled to my mind by a circum; 
stance which I noticed in April, 1826, a few miles from Cam- 
bridge, at a place called Westhoe. I there found in great 
plenty a peculiar variety of Primula, which I scarcely knew 
whether to call the oxlip or the cowslip. The leaves were 
larger and more downy than those usually found upon either 
of these plants; the flowers were in umbels, some drooping 
and others erect, and varying, in size and shape, from the or- 
dinary character of the ‘cowslip to that of the oxlip 3 the 
colour was as light a yellow as the usual tint of the primrose. 
Although this variety was every where abundant, both in the 
copses and open fields, neither myself nor a friend: who was 
with me could find a single primrose in the neighbourhood, 
and comparatively few decided cowslips ; which, however, were 
here and there scattered among this variety. At the very 
time that I first observed these plants, I was also much sur- 
prised at finding that a specimen of the cowslip, which had 
been transplanted into my garden when in flower the previous 
year, had completely changed its character this year; the limb 
of the corolla having become flatter and broader, the colour 
paler, and the whole appearance more like that of the oxlip. 
In the spring of the following year (182 7), this plant threw up 
a few single-flowered scapes in addition to its umbels. The 
