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 Linnaeus, 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 Linnaeus 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 Encyclopcedia 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; 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 (1827), this plant threw up 

 a few single-flowered scapes in addition to its umbels. The 



