206 On the Species of the Genus Primula in Essex . 
wood. In their leaves, the wide inflation of the calyx, the 
yellow colour of their petals, and the fairly well-defined eye- 
spot, they seemed to be intermediate hybrids, but they were 
flowering very feebly. In the second instance the plant was 
a large, healthy, free-flowering one, which in its nature 
evidently took most after the Cowslip, as might be expected 
from its growing on a hedge-bank. The flowers were too 
large and faintly-coloured for a pure Cowslip, and as I saw 
no Primroses within miles, but abundance of Oxlips in 
Wethersfield Wood about 100 yards off, I concluded it was a 
cross between them. Presuming this surmise to be correct, 
the facts I have brought forward show that all our three 
common Essex species will hybridize the one with the 
other. 54 
Numerous insects appear to visit the Oxlip. I have observed 
no less than eight or ten species in the act of doing so, but it is on 
bees that the plant relies mainly for its fertilization. Antlio- 
phora acervorum is the bee which oftenest visits the flowers. 
The honey-bee, and a large striped humble-bee [Bombus 
scrimshiranus , Kirby) are also very frequent visitors. I have 
also seen Bombus muscorum , Latr., at work, and several other 
species of Bombus. I have sometimes observed in the flowers 
the small beetle, Meligethes picipes, previously described; and 
on one occasion a specimen of the Brimstone butterfly was 
a visitor. Not unfrequently a dipterous insect was seen, 
its long proboscis and hovering flight apparently enabling 
54 On this subject Mr. Baker writes me:—“I suspect that all the nu¬ 
merous named Primulas of this section are mere varieties of our three 
species, and I have no doubt they all hybridize naturally with one 
another.” He thinks that the following are all probably mere varieties 
of P. elatior: —P. pallasii , Lehm.; P. viontana, Opitz.; P. perreiniana, 
Flugge ; P. fluggeana, Lehm.; P. intricata , Gren.; P. carpathica, Fuss.; 
P. alpestris, Schur.; and P. subarctica , Schur. 
While this sheet was passing through the press I saw, in the garden of 
Mr. J. H. Tuke, of Hitchin, a plant of P. elatior bearing light-red flowers. 
It was growing near a number of plants brought many years ago from 
Saffron Walden; but whether it had been induced by cultivation to 
produce its red flowers, or whether it was a hybrid seedling which had 
inherited them from a coloured Polyanthus or Primrose parent, I cannot 
say. 
