SALIENT CHARACTERS IN HIKRACIUM 815 
Yorkshire. The specimen, under the no. 4896, was erroneously 
referred by Backhouse to H. Schmidtii: he had not seen it, but 
relied on a tracing of the lat sent to him by the then Curator. 
nother important character is to be found in the stem-branching. 
In those species in which the stem is branched above the cladophore, 
and terminal eared determinate, cym sometimes pleio- 
chasial or even umbellate. In Brees ‘this beanohing | is often 
loosely given as paniculate or corymbose, which conveys little 
information. In most cases it affords a reliable specific character 
when associated with other group-characters. 
0 come 0 a more vexed subject. In a notice of Fries con- 
oe to this Journal (1879, 83) by Dr. A. N. Lundstrém, it was 
ted that Fries believed that all species as we know them now ex- - 
isted from the beginning. One i is aghast to think of the geographical 
distribution affected b ytl 1 andnamed 
by Dahlstedt so aa ago as—then. Now ‘Fries and - followers are 
dead against the hybrid- theory in “Hier me pels even as they are con- 
the blended characters s being maintained through successive genera- 
tions; so, I believe, in the study of the many forms o hawkweeds, 
their tendency to form natural hybrids, and in the inherent in- 
Soon of their eects It must not be forgotten that bolas 
may remain sterile from lack of opportunity, because they have not 
been fertilized, or that an attempt at fertilization - been clumsily 
made, whether nasarally or artificially. But this is not a case of 
sterility, it is merely virginity. The opponents of eclution have 
ever been anti-hybr nits, so ingrained has been the idea of the 
immutability of speci 
he expressive terms of ** phyllopodous”’ and ‘‘ aphyllopodous ”’ 
re not made use of by British aE gists. An apparently 
inteirnedin ate mode of rowth is overlooked. In some species the 
radical leaves om = fresh at the x si of flowering, but not 
numerous, some ing withered, and others about to dry up. 
Such plants are « hypophslopotots ’ and are best included in the’ 
former cate egory. Such may be in some allies of H. vulgatum, 
nd in H, juranum and H. nobi le, 
a curious note in Gardeners’ Poairowoage 1880, p. 177:—“ In [those] 
in AS00180 it was considered by a i of no doubt seeny People be 
be almost an impious thing to raise fiybria-4 
interference with the laws of the Creator r, and s0 ae was this prejudice i in 
certain quarters that some of the nurser erymen at that day were fain to conceal 
the hybrid parentage of the ag they offered, Ea to catalogue them as if they 
were imported species from the Cape.’ 
