158 On the Species of the Genus Primula in Essex.
The arrangement of the tables will, I think, be sufficiently
plain without any explanation.18
An examination of Table I. shows that, out of 1639 Prim-
rose plants observed on twenty-two different occasions between
January 22nd, 1882, and May 1st, 1883, in different localities
in Essex and Kent, 758 proved to be short-, 872 long-, and 9
equal-styled, or a majority altogether of 114 for the 1. On
eight of these occasions, however, the s. had the majority,
but only of 45 out of a total of 299 plants observed; while
on the remaining fourteen occasions the 1. had a majority of
159 out of 1340 plants examined. On the eight occasions
when the s. secured the majority the proportion, when com-
pared with 100, varied between 214 and 111—a great
divergence. On those fourteen occasions when the 1. had
the majority the proportion, when compared with 100, varied
between 68 and 93. Taking all the observations together we
find that the average proportion in which the s. stand to the
1. is as 87 to 100. The observations, however, show a great
diversity, one from the other, for which I am wholly unable
to account. At first I imagined that the situation in which
the plants grew—whether under cover or in the open—had
something to do with it, but now that I have worked out the
results I cannot trace any such effect. The three first
observations in 1882 and the first one in 1883 seem to show
that the short-styled rather than the long-styled plants flower
first, but they were made on too few plants to be reliable.
Table II. shows that of 6482 plants of P. elatior observed
on thirty-four different occasions between March 12th, 1882,
and April 30th, 1883, in various localities in N.W. Essex,
2795 were short, 3668 long, and 19 equal-styled, thus giving
the 1. a majority of 873. On five of these occasions, however,
the s. had a majority, but only of 21 out of 613 plants
examined, the relative proportions between the two forms
in these cases ranging between 104 and 117 as compared
with 100. In the remaining twenty-nine cases the 1. had an
aggregate majority of no less than 894 out of 5869 plants,
18 [For the sake of brevity we shall frequently print "s." for "short-
styled plants," and "1." for "long-styled plants" in the tables and
text.—Ed.]