218 



REPORT ON THE 



main points contained in Kerner's " History of the Auricula." — 

 Ed.] 



Mr. A. W. Bennett published a summary of it in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 

 Vol. iv. N.S. (1875), p. 806 ; still, a restatement may be desirable now, apropos of 

 Mr. Hibberd's paper. 



Kerner's article appeared in the sixth volume of the Zeitschrift der 

 Deutschen und Oesterreichischen Alpenvereins, Munich, 1875, and was published 

 also as a separate pamphlet of sixty-four pages 8vo, at Innsbruck. For 

 clearness I will number the different points of the history. 



1. About the year 1570, the Emperor Maximilian II. possessed a large 

 garden in the neighbourhood of Vienna, which Clusius repeatedly refers to, 

 containing a great number of species, to which both Italy and the eastern 

 Mediterranean supplied a rich contingent. 



2. A passion for gardening had seized upon the noble Viennese ladies and 

 others of that period ; and the peasantry used to bring down to the Viennese 

 markets for sale specimens of many kinds of Alpines — among others, Primula 

 Auricula, L., P. Clusiana, Tsch., and P.farinosa, L. 



3. The Belgian L'Ecluse (Clusius), who was the greatest botanist of his 

 day, was in 1573 invited by the Emperor to Vienna, and received the honorary 

 title of Court Botanist. 



4. In his Vienna garden, Clusius had a special portion devoted to Alpines, 

 and cultivated as many as fifty species, with the object of making them 

 permanent ornaments of a garden. 



5. He had an especial preference for the Alpine Primulas. 



6. Others, as Professor Aichholz, in Vienna, who in 1576 made excursions 

 in Styria ; Camerarius, of Nuremburg, in the Alps of Salzburg and Tyrol ; and 

 Schlick, of Kaufbeuren, in the Rhcetian Alps, brought down, like Clusius, for 

 cultivation, numerous Alpines. 



7. "When Clusius left Vienna to settle in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, he 

 commenced a most active correspondence with Viennese and other ladies, 

 noblemen, landowners, priests, apothecaries, and others, upon botanical 

 matters; and in this way was continually receiving both living and dried 

 specimens of Styrian, Carinthian, Salzburg, Tyrol, Bavarian, Swiss, and 

 Venetian Alpines, as well as plants from Belgium, England, Spain, Italy, 

 Hungary, Crete and Constantinople. 



8. Clusius bewails the difficulty he meets with in "taming" these 

 Alpine Primulae; and especially laments his want of success with the 

 " blauen speik " (P. glutinosa). Two only, P. Auricula, Linnaeus, and P. 

 pubescens, Jacquin, responded to his efforts to cultivate them. 



9. Of the latter Primula, which he calls Auricula Ursi EL, he says that 

 he saw it first in the garden of his friend Prof. Aichholz, in Vienna, who had 

 received it from a noble lady, but did not know whence she obtained it. He 

 had sought for it in vain in the Austrian (Archduchy) and Styrian Alps ; 

 but, later, learnt from his friend that it was found in the Alps near Innsbruck. 



In confirmation of this I intercalate the next paragraph. 



[10. In Amthor's Alpenfreund, Vol. x., p. 178, it is stated that a certain 

 Countess Trautsmannsdorf, who passed her " Sommerfrisch " at Schloss 

 Trautson, near Matrei, on the Brenner Pass, sent the P. pubescens to Clusius 

 for his Alpine garden.] 



