PRIMULA CONFERENCE. 



185 



knowledge obtained from the collector has been of distinct advantage 

 to him or not. 



Professor Balfour : The question was answered in my Masters 

 lecture last year, in which was pointed out the importance of having 

 information as to the conditions. I always have pointed to the 

 importance of the collector giving the actual habitat, and not merely 

 the altitude. 



Mr. Elwes : Whether, for instance, it is marshy or what not ? 



Professor Balfour : I want the actual habitat, whether amongst 

 rock, amongst stone, or so on. If a collector will give us that informa- 

 tion it will be of some use. That is where Mr. Forrest excels ; he 

 gives us a lot of detail of the exact habitat, and you can correlate it. 

 A collector who merely says he got it at 10,000 ft. gives no information 

 of any value, because you can have two plants growing at the same 

 altitude but under entirely different conditions. Mere altitude or 

 latitude is of very little use unless the collector goes further and gives 

 us the details of the habitat. 



Mr. Elwes : May I ask another question ? I understood you to 

 suggest that many of these plants were biennial. 



Professor Balfour : Only P. spicaia that I know of. 



The President : I think none of them is really biennial, but it 

 would be better to treat them as if they were biennial. We have 

 had a very interesting lecture, and most pertinent, admirable questions 

 asked upon it. I will now ask for Mr. Craib's paper.* 



" NOTES ON HIMALAYAN PRIMULAS." 



Mr. W. G. Craib, M.A.: Just over a year after Sir George Watt 

 delivered his paper f on Indian Primulas there appeared in Engler's 

 " Pflanzenreich " a monograph of the family Primulaceae by Pax and 

 Knuth.J This monograph in its treatment of the Indian species differs 

 to a considerable extent in its grouping of the species from the arrange- 

 ment adopted by Sir George Watt as also from that proposed in the 

 " Flora of British India." In the limitation of the species there are also 

 considerable differences. Although in many points the monograph, so 

 far as the Indian species are concerned, is a decided advance on the 

 earlier works, the writer must point out that it is by no means final, 

 for much remains to be done before our knowledge of them can be 

 said to be nearly complete. 



The object of the present paper is to give an indication of the 

 work done since Sir George Watt's contributions, and that purpose 

 will probably be best served by taking the sections of the genus in 

 the sequence proposed by Pax and Knuth and adding any remarks 

 on the differences (as regards limitation of species &c.) between 

 their views and those of Sir George Watt, and on any points in which 



* This, in the absence of the author, was read in title by the Rev. W. Wilks. 

 f See p. 196. % See p. 219. 



