120 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



And P. hirsuta, with the one exception of P. pedemontana, is probably 

 the most gorgeous of its section, as (under the false name of viscosa) 

 it is certainly the most general in cultivation. Accordingly the cross 

 that results is one of unexampled splendour, P. hirsuta seeming able 

 to communicate a glowing corrective of colour, and an undiminished 

 solidity of form and texture, such as we are disappointed not to find 

 imposed on minima by the apparently even more dominant and 

 magnificent spectabilis. The type-name of minima x hirsuta is P. 

 X Steinii, Widmer, and from its many and subsequent shades and inter- 

 shades, crossings and re-crossings (for these plants are fertile) stand 

 out superbly P. xBilekii (as I believe, though I have never collected it), 

 P. X Forsteri, Widmer (minima > hirsuta) , and P. X Kellereri, Widmer 

 (minima < hirsuta). These crosses are of unparalleled splendour, per- 

 fectly dwarf, almost as much so as minima, but with flowers larger, 

 wider, and more solid than those of either parent, and of an almost 

 startling intensity of rich red or pink. This, of course, is true of the 

 best forms only ; the names can never be taken as fixed rigidly on 

 any one development, and I have seen types called P.xKellereri and 

 P. X Forsteri that are pale and starry by comparison with the huge- 

 flowered claret-crimson plant I have long cherished as P. Kellereri, 

 and the expansive glowing great stars that classically belong to P. 

 Forsteri. This last, but for the size of its flowers, and a certain un- 

 mistakable different look in the leaf (owing to a minute legacy of 

 glandular dots and oval-shaped end from hirsuta), is apparently a 

 gigantic minima with two or three flowers to a minute scape ; P. 

 Kellereri is ampler in leafage, darker in its green, more glandular, and 

 altogether approaches rapidly towards hirsuta on its smaller 

 scale of growth and larger of flower. Unfortunately these crosses 

 seem extremely rare. I have no doubt that they are to be found 

 wherever the two possible parents meet in the Brenner district (I do 

 not know of records for them from the Hohe Tauern — nor indeed 

 have ever verified the record of P. hirsuta round the Gross Glockner, 

 despite my searches). Yet their clumps are isolated in each station, 

 and of painfully infrequent occurrence. In one locus classicus I could 

 only discover a single tuft of Forsteri, one clump and one single rosette 

 of Kellereri, in two hunts that covered a mile or more of mountain 

 slope. For one thing, the parent species do not grow actually together ; 

 minima covers the moorland turf by the acre, but hirsuta hugs the rocks 

 and precipitous gullies of the descending streams ; if ever it attempts 

 a lodgment above on the moor (though much larger, it is softer in 

 nature than minima, and has not minima's leathery imperturbability 

 that quietly occupies a whole tussock to the destruction of all com- 

 petitors) it is usually in feeble, banished-looking specimens, not of 

 sufficient force for successful breeding. Consequently, intercourse is 

 not so easy as where minima shares the open hill with another species, 

 as, for instance, with the Arthritic Primulas and P. glutinosa (minima 

 nowhere meets integri folia), and it is, again, on a little rocky ridge 

 that hirsuta and minima are best able to come into contact, and there, if 



