.70 HYBRID PKISIULAS. Chap. II 



7 inches in height, which bore umbels of flowers of 

 the same character as before. This fact led me to ex- 

 amine the other plants after they had flowered and 

 were dug up ; and I found that the flower-peduncles 

 of all sprung from an extremely short common scape, 

 of which no trace can be found in the pure primrose. 

 Hence these plants are beautifully intermediate be- 

 tween the oxlip and the primrose, inclining rather 

 towards the latter ; and we may safely conclude that the 

 parent oxlips had been fertilised by the surrounding 

 primroses. ^ 



From the various facts now given, there can be no 

 doubt that the common oxlip is a hybrid between the 

 cowslip (P veris, Brit. Fl.) and the primrose (P. vul- 

 garis, Brit. Fl.), as has been surmised by several 

 botanists. It is probable that oxlips may be produced 

 either from the cowslip or the primrose as the' seed- 

 bearer, but oftenest from the latter, as I judge from 

 the nature of the stations in which oxlips are generally 

 found,* and from the primrose when crossed by the 

 cowslip being more fertile than, conversely, the cowslip 

 by the primrose. The hybrids themselves are also 

 rather more fertile when crossed with the primrose 

 than with the cowslip. Whichever may be the seed- 

 bearing plant, the cross is probably between different 

 forms of the two species ; for we have seen that legiti- 

 mate hybrid unions are more fertile than illegitimate 

 hybrid unions. Moreover a friend in Surrey found 

 that 29 oxlips which grew in the neighbourhood of 

 his house consisted of 13 long-styled and 16 short- 

 styled plants ; now, if the parent-plants had been 

 illegitimately united, either the long- or short-styled 

 form would have greatly preponderated, as we shall 



• See also on this h"ad Hardwicke's 'Science Gossip,' 1867, PP. 

 IH, 137. 



