210 A STUDY OF WOOD HYACINTHs. 
Clusters of flowers all axillary and leafy. Corolla glabrous internally, 
Calyx generally glabrous or glabrescent, very rarely pubescent pr 
sented cardiaca, rubra, and gentilis. About seventy species are 
admitted, all of which are characterized by means of analytical keys like 
hose in Boreau's * Flore du Centre.’ 
Gxtracts and Abstracts. 
A STUDY OF WOOD HYACINTHS. 
By J. G. Baker, F.L.S. 
As is known to many of our readers, Messrs. Barr and Sugden, of 
Covent Garden, have taken a great deal of pains for many years past to 
get together as complete a collection as possible of the existing forms of 
the group of Scillas to which our common wild English wood Hyacinth © 
belongs. This group or sub-genus, which has received no less than four 
necting link between typical Scilla and Hyacinthus, because it resembles, 
in the shape of the flower, the cultivated oriental Hyacinth. Linneus 
placed the wild wood Hyacinth of western Europe in the same genus, 
Hyacinthus; but later systematists, bearing in mind that the divisions of 
the perianth are distinct from one another down to the very base, have 
either placed it in Seilla, or regarded it as a genus distinct from both Scilla 
. Barr has more than once kindly supplied me with 
specimens of the principal forms, but I never had the opportunity of paymg 
a visit to his nursery grounds, and seeing them actually growing side 
by side until recently. As his collection contains not less than 50 
considerable number of individuals, it furnishes as good an opportunity as 
can well be desired for studying the characteristics of the forms, and the 
nature and amount of the differences between them. No doubt we are now 
in England at the present time in the possession of far fuller material for 
the study of the group than that to which the authors who had treat 
upon it in times past had access. The views which different authors have 
which there is in naming and classifying plants in books, gardens, and 
herbaria, that I am induced to send somewhat copious extracts from my 
notes on the matter. 
First of all, beginning, as one should, with the plants themselves, i 
mı Sve my notes on the characters of some of the most striking forms. 
These notes, I should explain, were all made upon living specimens 1n Mr. 
