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JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
the characters of one or other of the original parents. During the 
past summer I was so fortunate as to meet with a hybrid between 
two most strikingly dissimilar species in this genus, Epilobium 
hirsutum and E. montanum, growing near both, in the parish of 
Egg Buckland. Combining their features, its origin was a matter 
of no question, and the case stands as a proof of hybridism 
naturally taking place in the genus. Among other specimens of 
Epilobia collected at different times by me near Plymouth, and 
presented to the British Museum Herbarium, are presumed hybrids 
between lanceolatum and obscurum, lanceolatum and parviflorum, 
lanceolatum and montanum., and obscurum and parviflorum. In 
one species of this genus, E. angusti folium, a plant very rare in a 
wild state near Plymouth, Sir John Lubbock says (British Wild 
E lowers in Relation to Insects, p. 25, ed. 1), "Self-fertilization is 
impossible, from the fact that the stamens and pistils do not 
mature at the same time, a fact noticed by Sprengel so long ago as 
1790." As regards another species, named above, E. parviflorum, 
he says (p. 42) the contrary is the case. However, so far as the 
former plant is concerned, a succession of flowers on it, or any 
other proterandrous species, might of course enable the stigmas of 
the earlier-produced flowers to receive pollen from the anthers of 
later-opened ones. In other words, though fertilization could not 
take place through interaction between the organs of a single 
flower, it might through the combined action of those of two 
flowers growing on the same plant. The other genera in which I 
have found hybrids produced about Plymouth are — Galium, 
Oarduus, Verbascum, Primula, and Rumex ; probably Viola, 
Stachys, and Carex ; and perhaps Arctium, Mentha, and Rubus. 
Investigations of great interest and value might be carried on in 
our neighbourhood with the object of discovering the ways in 
which fertilization is usually brought about in these genera; 
enquiries as to the manner of conveyance of pollen from one 
species to another would call for observations of an entomological 
as well as botanical nature. 
I might go on to speak of peculiarities of distribution shown by 
the ranges of several of the large order Umbelliferce, as well as by 
many belonging to succeeding ones ; but shall travel no further 
onward in this paper among the species of the local flora, but fill 
its remaining portion by remarks of a retrospective kind. 
It has been my endeavour to show by simple facts that investi- 
