122 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



parents ; and all, in cultivation, are as easy as minima (if not easier) 

 and far more easy than gluiinosa, although they seem to me to inherit 

 some of gluiinosa' 's shyness in the matter of flowering. (I have a lovely 

 pure blue ' salisburgensis ' which is almost minima, but, like gluiinosa , 

 is exceedingly reluctant to bloom.) And another thing that has struck 

 me about this range of hybrids is the paradoxical distribution of their 

 forms. So far as my quests have carried me you very often find one 

 or other prevalent cross, without any of the rest — a problem I have 

 vainly tried to solve by conjectures as to variations in fertilization 

 that might be made by comparative differences in times of flowering 

 here and there. Yet minima blooms in a blaze of splendour from 

 earliest June and the melting of the snow, until far on in July to early 

 August (on high cold banks), while gluiinosa not only begins. with 

 minima as the snow melts, but outruns it by lasting until the snows 

 are getting ready to descend again. Very likely my observations 

 may be due, of course, merely to my imperfect experience. Be this 

 as it may, I can only declare that on the Pasterze moor, where both 

 parents abound, I have so far met no crosses at all ; on Kraxentrager, 

 above the Brenner, I found P. X salisburgensis sparsely occurring, but no 

 trace of any other form : in the volcanic Monzoni-Thal, Huteri is 

 rare, and biflora less so, while Floerkeana blots the blue distances with 

 frequent slabs of hot amethyst, but there is no sign whatever of 

 P. x salisburgensis ; while on the granites south of the Rolle Pass I found 

 salisburgensis abundant (in mid- June) , but neither flower nor promise 

 of any other. Whether aspect or geologic formation has any say 

 in this matter I leave it to ampler knowledge to decide, and ample*" 

 experience may well declare that these fancied inequalities of distribu- 

 tion are so many vain imaginations drawn from the imperfection of 

 my researches. 



The next great parent to which we come is the true P. viscosa 

 All. (1785) (in gardens too often masked by its varietal or subsequent 

 specific names of latijolia, Lapeyr. (1813), cy no glossi folia and graveolms) . 

 This magnificent species, tall, many-flowered, red-purple, malodorous, 

 ranges from the Pyrenees throughout the Graian, Cottian, and Maritime 

 Alps and the Engadine, reaching its furthest easterly limit in the 

 Voraarlberg, and more scantily penetrating south into the Bergamask 

 Hills ; and invariably, so far as I know, faithful to the igneous forma- 

 tions. Its associations are with P. iniegrifolia, sharing with this the 

 Pyrenees, the Engadine, the Voraarlberg ; with its subsection brother 

 P. marginala, in the Maritime, Graian, and Cottian Alps (where it 

 also meets with P. coiiia), with P. pedemoniana in the Western Graians 

 (Mont Cenis), and with P. hirsuia right across the entire range of its 

 distribution along the Central Alps, from the Pyrenees to the Voraarl- 

 berg. Among the crosses that result are some of the most brilliant 

 things we have ; the Engadine (that centre of Auricula x hirsuia = 

 P. pubescens), where hirsuia, viscosa, and iniegrifolia all abound, is a 

 specially happy hunting-place. For P. iniegrifolia X viscosa is ther e 

 of quite frequent occurrence, ranging between the two types called in 



