142 NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
BOTANY.
PHANEROGAMIA.
Abnormal Flowers of Lychnis and Chrysanthemum.—Mr. Willa-
ment has recently brought to me two abnormal flowers found by him in the
neighbourhood of Brentwood. One was a seedling of the Red Campion
(Lychnis diurna), and here the sepals had grown at the expense of the rest of
the plant, and approximated to foliage leaves ; the other was a collection of
some four or five inflorescences of the Oxeye Daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthe-
mum), which were fasciated and joined throughout their length, while the
stalk of another one adhered to the fasciated stalks for some distance above the
ground, and then becoming free, shot away, so that its head of flowers over-
lopped the compound mass by some inches.—W. M. W. Brentwood.
Primula elatior in Britain : its Distribution, Peculiarities, Hybrids,
and Allies.—At the meeting of the Linnean Society on June 17th—the last
meeting of the past session—Dr. A. Gunther, F.R.S., President, in the chair,
Mr. Miller Christy, F.L.S., read a lengthy paper on the above subject, in
which he stated the results of his observations on this plant since the appear-
ance of his paper "On the genus Primula in Essex" in the Transactions of the
Essex Field Club in 1884 (vol. iii., pp. 148-211).2 He remarked that this widely-
distributed Continental plant, though figured accidentally in English
Botany in 1709, was not really detected in Britain till 1842, when it was
found at Great Bardfield, in Essex, by Henry Doubleday, of Epping. Up
to that time, the totally distinct Hybrid Oxlip (P. acaulis x veris) was, by
British botanists, confused with and mistaken for it, as is still frequently
done. In Britain, P. elatior occupies a very sharply-defined area, lying chiefly
in the north-west part of Essex, the south-west part of Suffolk, and the south-
east portion of Cambridgeshire. This area is divided into two portions by
the valley of the River Cam, that portion lying to the east of the valley being
by far the larger of the two. There were only two outlying localities, so far
as Mr. Christy could ascertain. The two portions of this area cover the two
most elevated and unbroken portions of the Boulder Clay district, the loams
and gravels of the river-valleys and the Chalk being entirely avoided. The
boundary-lines (some 175 miles in length) which had been traced by Mr.
Christy with precision were, in consequence, very sinuous. They enclosed
together about 470 square miles, over which area the Oxlip flourishes in
immense abundance in all old woods and some meadows ; while the Primrose
(which grows all around) is entirely absent. Along the dividing line between
the two, which, is very sharply defined, hybrids are produced in great abund-
ance. On the other hand, the Cowslip (which grows both around and
throughout the Oxlip-area) very rarely hybridizes with it. Mr. Christy
believed that the Primrose was, in this country, gradually hybridizing the
Oxlip out of existence. He then noticed a rare single-flowered variety of
P. elatior, which (if thought to be of varietal rank) he proposed to call var.
acaulis, and several aberrations, showing upon the screen photographic views
of these and of the hybrids, as well as a map of the distribution of the Oxlip
2 See also a paper "On the Range of the Primrose (Primula vulgaris) and the Bardfield
Oxlip (P. elatior) in North-Western Essex," by Mr. J. French, with additional remarks by Mr.
Christy, tin the Essex Naturalist (vol. v. pp. 120-124), where some further details
are given.