114 JOURNAL OF THE EOYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Delavay sent home specimens, or shortly after, Dr. Henry also 

 met with the plant on hot, dry limestone rocks with little 

 moisture. (See Gardeners' Chronicle, January 2G, 1888, p. 114.) 



On visiting the gardens at Appley Towers, near Kyde, in the 

 autumn, Mr. Myles, the gardener, had shown Dr. Masters some 

 young plants raised from seed from Y-Chang by Mr. Pratt, and 

 which Dr. Masters immediately recognised as being the wild 

 form collected by Dr. Henry. The plants were, however, not in 

 flower. These plants, the leaves of which have a slight fra- 

 grance, he was very glad to see that day exhibited by Messrs. 

 Sutton, as in their hands the doubtful points would be cleared up 

 and new varieties obtained. He trusted also that Messrs. Sutton 

 would endeavour to cross the Chinese Primrose with the com- 

 mon Primrose, or with some of the other hardy species, and thus 

 confer a great boon on the cultivators of hardy plants. Hitherto, 

 he understood that Mr. Martin, the expert who hybridised and 

 cultivated Messrs. Sutton's Primroses, had been unsuccessful in 

 this direction, a fact which, in the case of Messrs. Sutton, only 

 showed the necessity for further effort. 



ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYCELIUM OF 

 USTILAGO VIOLACEA (PERS.) ON ITS HOST PLANTS. 



By Mr. C. B. Ploweight, F.L.S., F.R.H.S. 



On Lychnis. — It has been asserted that the presence of the 

 mycelium of U. violacea (U. anther arum, Fr.) in a plant of 

 Lychnis vcspertinawill change the sexuality of the host-plant, 

 simply by its action upon the stamens of the plant. But it has 

 very naturally been objected that there is no evidence to show 

 what the sex of the Lychnis plant originally was. Having 

 during the past three or four years cultivated in my garden 

 various individuals of L. cliurna and vespertina affected with 

 the parasite in question, the results of my observations may not 

 prove uninteresting. In studying the life -history of these 

 parasitic fungi nothing is so valuable as cultivating the host- 

 plants in a garden and continually watching their growth and 

 development. In the first place, it has always been taken for 



