176 On the Species of the Genus Primula in Essex. 
Mr. E. G. Varenne, of Kelvedon, who has been most kind 
in giving me information, writes—“ Primula elatior, Jacq., 
has not been found about Kelvedon, Halstead, Braintree, or 
Coggeshall that I know of. Certainly Mr. Bentall found the 
plant sparingly in a meadow near Grinstead Green. I have 
the plant from Wethersfield in 1877, and collected it in 
meadows above Codliam Mill, Wethersfield, in 1879. I may 
say that Bentall’s Grinstead Green locality is the one he 
meant to indicate when he recorded the plant as growing at 
Halstead. I believe I have somewhere a specimen, gathered at 
Grinstead Green and given me by Mr. Bentall, who had a paper- 
mill there; and on the farm was a brook, a tributary of the Colne, 
the low meadow-land about it resembling in its character 
that of the meadows at Bardfield and Wethersfield.” Mr. 
Varenne is explicit on this point because Bentall, writing in 
the ‘ Phytologist’ (vol. ii., p. 515) on April 16th, 1846, records 
the plant as “ in small quantities in a damp meadow at Hal¬ 
stead.” Grinstead Green is two miles from Halstead. From 
the • Flora of Essex ’ (Appendix III.) it appears that P. elatior 
grows in Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, and Suffolk, but not 
in Kent. The Bev. W. W. Newbould lias kindly informed 
me, on the authority of the Bev. — Hillhouse, that it also 
grows at Clapham and Marston, in Bedfordshire. 
I have, unfortunately, never in England seen P. elatior 
growing outside Essex, although it certainly does so. I will 
take the five counties abutting on Essex in order commencing 
with Suffolk. The authors of the ‘ Flora of Suffolk ’ state 
(page 58), under the heading P. veris, that the Oxlip (P. 
elatior) is “plentiful in moist pastures and hedge-banks at 
Hawstead, Hitcliam, Finborougli, &c.” I presume the authors 
were fully competent to identify the species, but “pastures 
and hedge-banks” are not the situations in which we usually 
find it in Essex. A specimen in the British Museum (Natural 
History), South Kensington, is labelled “ Hitcham, Suffolk, 
1844, C. C. Babington.” 
In Babington’s ‘ Flora of Cambridgeshire ’ (1860, p. 188) 
appears the following:—“Oxlip (P. elatior, Jacq.). P. veris 
elatior pallido jiore. Bay’s Catalogues (1660) 126, and Mar- 
