344 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
from getting a single seed of P. tangutica. You will raise more than 
you want of it out of the lots labelled P. Maximowiczii of the first year. 
In point of fact, the whole species is so dingy that, unless luck has served 
you with a really good red form, you will have far more pleasure with 
the Cowslip and the Primrose. I lack words, for my own part, decently 
to express my disgust with P. Maximowiczii (which I never saw in flower 
on the Chinese alps), and my complete contempt for P. tangutica, 
which I did. Its very best is pale-green reflexed stars, dark mahogany- 
coloured outside, and with a fine rim of yellow to the rays. I have seen 
it three feet in height. 
P. urticifolia (F 531) is, on the contrary, a perfect jewel, to the libel 
against which in Pax I was just in time to propound my palinode in 
the text of "The English Rock-garden." This wee lovely treasure is 
confined absolutely to dark, dank, and cool chines on the rare lime- 
stone outcrops of the Da-Tung range, and there precisely suggests a 
hybrid of P. minima and P. bella. It will be a delight of the highest 
rank for those who can give it the umbrageous and calcareous crannies 
it seems to claim. 
P. Woodwardii swallows up P. blaltea, as it was first called, and is 
therefore F 116 of 1914. I add nothing to the description, except 
that in the Da-Tung this plant is of hotter vinous purple in the flower, 
and occasionally wears powder on its scape. In cultivation, of all my 
Primulas of 1914, this proves, not only the heartiest and easiest in 
growth so far, but also develops an elegance of beauty and a white 
eye unknown to it at home. The confusion of names is none of mine. 
I was originally let know that this was P. blattea, and that P. Wood- 
wardii, a chance seedling from Be-ling seed, would pretty certainly 
have to retire ultimately into P. blattea. From which I concluded 
that P. blattea was the published authoritative name, and that P. 
Woodwardii never would be. On the contrary, letters got lost mean- 
while across Siberia, and only after using ' blattea ' do I learn that 
P. Woodwardii is the published valid name, and that thereby the 
slightly less irrelevant title of P. blattea is swept out into the limbo of 
things that never have existed, or, anyhow, that never " did have 
ought to." I trust, and confidently believe, that the superb merits of 
P. Woodwardii may earn for me and it a measure of pardon for the 
confusion in which we have both been implicated, by the uncertainties 
of the British learned and the Siberian posts. 
Primula sp. 694 exists for us only in a plant which only pro- 
blematically survives its fearful journey home, though lugged by 
me with exquisite pains through all the douanes of Siberia, Russia, 
Finland, and Sweden. Purdom brought it back from the Koko-nor alps, 
as a rare occurrence there on Serchim ; it had a look of P. Woodwardii 
rather than of P. tangutica, but its capsule presented what seemed like 
aberrancies from either. And there is no more to be said of it for the 
moment. 
Primula sp. (F 733) is in hopefuller case. Seed was got, and is 
coming well. This again, though, is but a problem, from Purdom 's 
visit to the alps down across the Si-ning Hor, while I was busy with 
