JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
April 21, 1881. ] 
21st 
Th 
Linnean Society at 8 P.M. 
22nd 
F 
Quekett Club at 8 P.M. 
23rd 
s 
Royal Botanic Society at 3.45 P.M. 
24th 
Sun 
1ST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 
25th 
M 
26th 
Tu 
Royal Horticultural Society—Fruit and Floral Committees at 
27th 
W 
Society of Arts at 8 P.M. [11 A.M. 
LECTURE ON THE AURICULA. 
[Delivered by the Rev. F. D. Horner at South Kensington on Tuesday last.] 
‘ AM asked to say a few words to you this after¬ 
noon upon the Auricula, which is a special 
feature in the Flower Show, contributed by the 
members of the National Auricula Society. 
With the flower in its beauty before you, my 
pleasant task can only be to say of it that 
which it has no power to express for itself. Mere 
praise to its very face would be as idle and unhappy as 
holding up a coloured picture to the inimitable original 
in life. But something of the past history of this flower, 
and something of the qualities that constitute its grace and 
beauty in the eyes of those to whom it is a very dear favourite, 
will add, I trust, to the interest with which you will regard 
and remember our flowers to-day. 
This plant has so long been under the care of man, that like 
his domestic animals, though sprung from a naturally wild and 
hardy thing, it would not live apart from him, and without 
that attachment on his part which it seems to so faithfully 
appreciate and reward. 
Some of the plants here to-day you have been wont to see in 
their accustomed place season after season, some even in suc¬ 
cessive shows. The Auricula is among them for one brief 
spring day—rare enough to be a floral phenomenon. It flashes 
into sight like some meteor across the sky and is gone. It is 
apparently a new comer, but in reality it is one of the very 
oldest of show flowers ; for there were exhibitions of Auriculas 
in Lancashire more than 150 years ago. Indeed, to antici¬ 
pate a little, I might have brought you a plant of a vene¬ 
rable sort called “ Jingling Johnny/’ shown at Eccles, then a 
straggling village near Manchester, a round century since. But 
the public career of the “ Jingler,” as he was familiarly called, 
is closed, his long days nearly numbered, and no reasonable 
extension of a class list could now set him up again on a 
pinnacle ®f floral fame. Now we are accustomed to see such 
excellencies of form, colour, and habit in exhibition plants as 
are not found in the uncultured species from which they may 
have sprung. But in so high degree have all these points been 
gained in the Auricula that it is nothing short of an acquired 
flower, developed past resemblance to any wild original. 
I propose to divide my subject into three sections, and will 
trust to make none of them too tedious for your patience. The 
first shall be upon the derivation and history of the flower ; 
the next, the Auricula from a florist’s point of view ; the last, 
a very brief touch upon its culture. Not that I have any secrets 
which brevity should conceal. If there are any among my 
307 
hearers who so far only regard this flower with a cold and 
distant admiration as a new and rather curious feature in a 
flower show that ought to have novelty now and then to keep 
it up, I shall be glad if in any degree I can show them how 
very much more than this a flower is to those who love it. 
Derivation. —In the botanical census by which plants are 
grouped according to natural orders the Auricula is classed 
with the Primulacese. The family is a large one. Some of its 
members bear such resemblance to our most familiar type, the 
Primroses, as to be easily recognised for Primulas ; others are 
apparently so far removed both from it and from each other 
as to seem no blood relations at all, but only distant connections 
in law'—botanical law. However, I shall not here introduce a 
larger circle of the Primula family than may interest you as 
showing the resemblance and dissimilarity of consorted plants. 
The nearest native relatives of the Auricula are the Bird’s- 
eye Primrose (P. farinosa), frequent in the north of England 
in marshy places and on the broken banks of little moorland 
rills ; and also Primula scotica of Sutherland and Orkney. 
But after the Cowslip and Polyanthus, what a mixed group the 
Primulaceae appear! The Cyclamens belong to it, and the 
more aspiring Dodecatheons of America, with their not far 
dissimilar flowers clustered on tall stocks, as if they were 
the bold Oxlip form of the Primrose Cyclamen. Another 
classmate is the Anagallis, A. arvensis being the red Pimper¬ 
nel of our arable lands, and A. tenella the slender little beauty 
that threads its way daintily among the green mosses on the 
peaty moors. Bitter marshes by the sea contribute a member 
to the order in the Sea Milkwort (Glaux maritima) ; while in 
that lovely aquatic Hottonia palustris, the Water Violet, we 
see the Primulaceae taking a decided plunge under water, and 
here as it were a veritable mermaid Primula. Thus, from the 
top of a mountain to the bottom of a pond we have Primu- 
laceous plants as widely separated in habitat as in habit. 
Besides the Primula Auricula of the Alps, the remote ancestor 
of our cultured flower, and one given by Paxton as hortensis, 
a European plant with name suggestive of some degree of cul¬ 
tivation, and flowers described as variegated, there are several 
Primulas of Switzerland and Southern Europe interesting as 
bearing a resemblance to the Auricula on a small wild scale. 
There is P. marginata with serrated mealed foliage and lilac 
flowers with rudiments of that meal in the centre, which is so 
intensely developed in the Auricula. Also P. Balbisii with a 
habit of foliage in white and green quite that of the Auricula, 
and half pendant flowers “ like Cowslips wan that hang the 
pensive head,” and also slightly mealed in the eye. Again, 
P. intermedia, P. pubescens, P. viscosa, P. villosa, and others 
with pink and purplish flowers, have the habit of diminutive 
Auriculas. Still all primitive and allied forms are a far 
remove from the derived flowers of so long a period of culture 
as extends over three hundred years, for Gerard states that 
prior to 1597 there were Auriculas in English gardens. These 
early varieties were yellows, browns, and purples ; and as you 
look upon the beautiful flower to-day in its jewellery of 
emerald and pearl, and its velvet textures of many lovely 
colours, you will wonder how all this investiture of different 
orders of beauty descended upon a little pale wild flower of the 
Alps. The first advances from the purely wild type were the 
results of carefully seeding this sportive flower, which in its 
attribute of infinite variability from seed has the fundamental 
qualification for being what is known as a florists' flower. But 
No. 43.— Yon. II., Third Series. 
No. 1699.— Yon. LXV., Olb Series. 
