PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



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subject is the book which I hold in my hand — w Bariorum 

 Plantarum Historia," by Clusius (1601). That book Mr. Hibberd 

 dismisses quite casually, but that book really contains the key 

 to the whole question. If I could have got hold of Mr. Hibberd 

 before he wrote his paper, I should like to have locked him up 

 for a morning that he might settle down and fully study that 

 book before committing his remarks to paper. Clusius knew 

 extremely well the ground with which Mr. Churchill is now so 

 familiar, the Alps of Austria and Styria, and in this book he 

 describes in full detail the Primulas of the Austrian and 

 Styrian Alps. He describes eight of them and gives figures of 

 six, which are admirable, and which can be easily recognized as 

 being plants that we know perfectly well at the present day. 

 That is, in fact, the basis of the whole thing, and the characters 

 of these eight species and the figures of the species were thoroughly 

 worked out by the end of the sixteenth century. There is a 

 figure and a description of Primula Auricula, which Clusius calls 

 " Auricula ursi." The serration in the leaves is rather exaggerated, 

 but there cannot be any question or doubt that it is the true 

 Primula Auricula of botanists, as found at the present day. The 

 second figure which Clusius gives is Primula jxibescens, which 

 he calls " Auricula ursi 2." Clusius says that he himself introduced 

 the Primula pubescens into cultivation, but that the first one was 

 already widely spread in the Belgian Gardens and had been 

 in cultivation before his time. The other six, four of which are 

 figured, do not specially concern the present question. 



Now, Mr. Hibberd brings Gerard in evidence. In the 

 first edition of Gerard, published in 1597, there are two 

 figures given bearing upon the present subject, and comparing 

 those two figures all the value which we get from them is 

 this. The figure of the true Auricula is simply an exact copy 

 from the figure of Matthiolus in 1563, and the other is a 

 perfectly ideal figure which does not agree with anything 

 whatever — Gerard evidently evolved it out of his own con- 

 sciousness. Mr. Hibberd goes on to speak about Johnson's 

 edition of Gerard. Now the figures in that edition, with one 

 slight exception, are simply of no value whatever as bearing on the 

 subject, because every one of them is taken bodily from Clusius, 

 so that we may leave Gerard and Johnson entirely out of court. 

 What 1 suppose to be the history of the Auricula is something 



