310 IMPLEMENT MADE FROM A STAG'S ANTLER.
hedge-bank at Wethersfield, Essex, on May 1st following. Since
that time, I have only twice seen other examples of the hybrid—
in Long Wood, Horningsheath, Suffolk, on April 25th, 1897, and
in Balsham Wood, Cambs., on May 15th, 1898. I have else-
where3 discussed the probable causes of the extreme rarity of
this hybrid, which is the more remarkable in view of the
extreme facility with which (as I have shown) hybrids arise
between the Oxlip and the Primrose, and between the Primrose
and the Cowslip. Owing to the unusual occurence of this
hybrid, it has been thought well to give here a photographic
figure of it. The accompanying illustration (Fig. 2) shows a
flower of one of the plants I obtained at Horningsheath in April
last year, and still have under cultivation. Unfortunately,
through having been kept under glass, the flower has acquired
a habit slightly different from that it had when growing wild,
having become somewhat paler in colour and more straggling;
but the illustration given represents, nevertheless, sufficiently
well the appearance of the flower in question.
AN IMPLEMENT MADE FROM A STAG'S
ANTLER, FROM WORMINGFORD, ESSEX.
BY WORTHINGTON' G. SMITH, F.L.S., M.A.I.
[Read July 2nd, 1898.]
THE accompanying illustration shows, one-third the actual
size, an implement made from the shaft of an antler of Red
Deer and kindly presented to the Museum of the Essex Field
Club by Mr. Percy Gearing, of the "Wake Arms" Inn, Epping
Forest.1
The implement was found whilst putting in the foundations
of the new bridge which crosses the river Stour, and which con-
nects the boundaries of Essex and West Suffolk. The situation
is near the old ford in the village of Wormingford. The
implement, according to the statement of the foreman, was found
in a bed of Alluvium, 10 feet from the surface and below the
foundations of a former timber structure or pile bridge, about
eighty years old..
3 Journ, Linn. Soc. (Bot.), xxxiii. (1837), p. 198.
1 The Club is indebted to Mr. Smith's accustomed kindness for both the drawing and
process block of this illustration.—Ed.]