soft leaves, others with small sparse leaves ; stems were stout and upright 

 or weak and sprawling ; and the flowers were very diverse, some had 

 no ray florets, and the disc florets were comparatively large and colourful 

 or small and inconspicuous, in others the ray florets were broad and 

 numerous, small and scanty, long, short or quilled, with the flowers 

 in loose or tight clusters, long lasting or quickly fading — an astonishing 

 variety of forms. One hybrid between Oxford Ragwort and Sticky 

 Groundsel (S. viscosa) breeds true to type and has been given specific 

 rank — S. Londoniensis. 



Generally speaking, a hybrid is the result of the crossing of two 

 species of the same genus, thus Lupinus polyphyllus and Lupinus arborea 

 have been crossed to obtain certain strains of garden Lupins. Oc- 

 casionally, however, it is possible to cross two plants belonging to 

 separate genera, thus producing bigeneric hybrids. Nurserymen have 

 made several bigeneric crosses of Orchids, and I believe that bigeneric 

 hybrids can occur in wild Orchids. 



Perhaps the most curious result of natural hybridization has taken 

 place in Grasses. Many of our best known wild Grasses are hybrids, 

 the natives having been crossed with Continental species that were intro- 

 duced accidentally, or deliberately grown for fodder. In many cases 

 the hybrid has completely suppressed the parent types. An example 

 is the Wall Barley. Centuries ago a native meadow type became crossed 

 with an introduced Continental form that was a troublesome weed of 

 cornfields. Neither of these can be found in Britain today, instead, 

 their offspring is a common and harmless inhabitant of waste land. 



Vera F. P. Day, n.d.h., f.r.h.s. 



ANIMALS AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION 



BY 



JOHN SANKEY 

 (Assistant Warden, Juniper Hall Field Centre, Dorking) 



PVERY naturalist knows that some plants and animals can only be 

 -■-^ found in certain places. Some insects have a distribution which 

 corresponds with the range of their food-plant ; a species of flower may 

 occur only on a certain kind of soil, and so on. Climate may be an im- 

 portant influence on the distribution of some species. I wish to draw 

 attention to the distribution of some species of harvest-spiders (Arachnida 

 Opiliones) which I have studied for a few years. Further information on 

 this subject will be found in references 1, 4, 5 and 6. 



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