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THE ORIGIN OF THE HYBRID PRIMULA 
ELATIOR x VULGARIS DEMONSTRATED 
EXPERIMENTALLY IN THE FIELD, WITH 
NOTES ON OTHER BRITISH PRIMULA 
HYBRIDS 
By MILLER CHRISTY, F.L.S. 
S oon after the appearance, in 1897, of my paper on “ Primula 
elatior in Britain 1 ,” I had the pleasure of showing to Dr Bateson, 
Miss E. R. Saunders, and others the various Primula hybrids I had 
described therein—namely: (1) P. elatior x vulgaris , (2) P. elatior 
x urn's, and (3) P. veris x vulgaris —all growing in a wild state in 
certain woods in Essex, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire. 
On this occasion Dr Bateson (without disputing my assumption 
that the plants in question really were hybrids) pointed out that, 
for purposes of absolute scientific accuracy, their hybrid origin, even 
if practically certain inferentially, ought to be demonstrated incon- 
testibly by means of definite experiment. 
Thereupon it was decided to attempt to accomplish this by 
planting some Oxlips (P. elatior) in woods wherein Primroses 
(P. vulgaris) only were growing and some Primroses in other woods 
wherein Oxlips only were growing, and then waiting to see whether 
plants similar to those I had described as hybrids between these two 
species would appear naturally in the course of time. 
That the plants I had described as hybrids were really such 
might, of course, have been demonstrated much more easily and 
quickly by artificially pollinating flowers of either of the two reputed 
parents with pollen from flowers of the other on covered plants 
growing in cultivation and then raising plants from any fertile seed 
resulting. As a matter of fact, Miss Saunders succeeded in doing 
this soon after the time when our experiments described herein 
were begun 2 , and since then Mr E. G. Highfield has done the 
1 Journ. Linn. Soc., Bot. 33 (1897), pp. 172-201. 
2 Miss Saunders writes me: “ In 1899 and 1900 ,1 raised a number of hybrids 
between P. elatior and P. vulgaris from crosses which I made for the purpose 
of testing the views expressed in your original paper. The results entirely 
confirmed your conclusions; but, having done this and having found the 
sterility so great that there was no likelihood of obtaining any genuine ratios 
in support of the Mendelian Theory or otherwise, I did not continue the 
experiments and no record was published.” 
