THE OXLIP, COWSLIP, AND PRIMROSE 147 
the principal hybrids, and the lines ao either side the cross connect 
it with the assumed parents. No attempt has been made to repre- 
sent in this diagram anything beyond the primary, secondary, and 
tertiary forms; but nature produces quaternary and more remote 
forms which defy analysis 
Besides the above considerations respecting their —— 
in structure, these plants have most interesting relations in space, 
the illustration of which must be confined to the British Islands. 
The habitats of these plants are not slike: the primrose is a plant 
of the shade, liking woods, and sheltered railway slopes and hedge 
banks; the cowslip is a plant of the meadows, delighting in the 
open, and it flowers about three weeks later than the primrose. But 
what ssc the habitat of the oxlip? Many would say that while 
not so common as either the primrose or the cowslip, it was fairly 
plentiful wherever the primrose and cowslip occur, and that it was 
generally met with in the open, This association of the oxlip with 
the primrose and cowslip presupposes that the oxlip is of hybrid 
origin, and indeed “aime all the plants which pass in this country 
for native oxlips, from other than the eastern counties, are the 
result of the primrose boing pollinated from the cowslip. In that 
case the fertilization comes from the pollen of an early cowslip 
or i aa ed insects a the —_ of alate primrose. Such 
hybrids are by no means infrequent, and in our part of the oa 
cee occur at Ashley and Mobberley i in Cheshire; in several place 
erbyshire, as at Spear - -— in North Wales, as an 
Gloddaeth ; and they are comm n Wharfedale and other York- 
shire dales. But all these are pacer oe oxlips, not Jacquin’s oxlip, 
as the ee remarks will make clear. 
The area _— ee 8 oalip occupies in this country is en- 
closed for the most part in an inverted triangle whose weste 
point is near St. slesks in Hintingdos nshire ; its “eastern point is at 
dg 
drawn from Newmarket to Bishop Stortford. The upper half of 
the er oxlip area is in Suffolk and the lower half in Essex. 
Its limits have been Taboriously pegged out by Mr. Miller Christy, 
and the result of many years’ work is recorded in an interesting 
paper L ogeponenk in the Journal of ihe Linnean Pte (Botany), xxxiil. 
172-201 (1897). This paper is ace companied by a map of the dis- 
tricts occupied by oa oxlip in Great Britain, ee which the rough 
ee given above is taken, and from the same paper have been 
acieed: most of the f oo whieh follow bercticrr” with its distribu- 
ot Diss. | “i 
