April igtJi, i8g8?\ Proceedings. xxxv 



Ordinary Meeting, April 19th, 1898. 

 James Cosmo Melvill, M.A., F.L.S., President, in the Chair. 



The thanks of the members were voted to the donors of the 

 books upon the table. 



Mr. Charles Bailey exhibited some living plants of 

 Jacquin's oxlip {Primicla elatior\ which he had gathered ten 

 days ago in a wood on Mrs. Rayment's estate at Tindon End, 

 near Thaxted, Essex. He pointed out its peculiar distribution 

 in England — where it is confined to an area within the triangle 

 formed between St. Neots in Huntingdon, Stowmarket in Suffolk, 

 and Bishop Stortford in Hertfordshire — and explained the 

 botanical characters which separate it from the primrose and 

 cowslip. Mr. Miller-Christy in his very interesting paper, read 

 before the Linnean Society last November, refers to the strong 

 scent of the oxlip, but Mr. Bailey in the large number of plants 

 he examined last w^eek in Essex, was rather struck with the 

 absence of odour in the oxlip, especially compared with the 

 cowslip or primrose. With it he exhibited a flower-scape, from 

 a root which he brought some years ago from Gloddaeth, near 

 Llandudno, which was a natural hybrid between the cowslip and 

 the primrose, and which flowered every spring in his garden. 

 Such hybrids generally pass for the true oxlip ; and they are 

 not infrequent in districts where both parents occur; in the 

 neighbourhood of Manchester he had found this spurious oxlip 

 at Ashley, at Mobberley, and in several places in Derbyshire. 



