166 On the Species of the Genus Primula in Essex.
On May 2nd I marked nineteen plants of Cowslip growing
on a bank at Chignal, and at the end of June I gathered and
counted the seeds. The results are stated in Tables X. and
XI., and are certainly rather unsatisfactory; but I give them
for what they are worth. Unfortunately, as in the last case,
I neglected to record the number of flowers which produced
no seed. Had I done so it would have altered the results
of this species and the last. With the Cowslip, indeed, I
know that most of them were on the side of the 1. As with
the last, this table shows that the individual capsules of the
s. produce, on an average, more seeds than those of the 1.,
but that the 1. produce most capsules. However, I do not
consider that these two latter experiments are satisfactory,
as the plants in the first case were all small and late, and
therefore not likely to give reliable results ; and in the second
they grew in a very unfavourable situation, namely, the
bottom of a hedge, where the surrounding grass and bushes
no doubt partly choked and smothered them. I could see by
the number of undeveloped ovules that the flowers had not been
fully fertilized in either form; so that I believe the plants
had not produced half the seed they should have done, and
that which they had produced was, much of it, very small. I
shall have a few words to say on this subject later. The four
highest numbers for the s. are 57, 60, 61, and 67; and the
four highest numbers for the 1. are 61, 62, 65, and 69; while
the four lowest numbers for the s. are 6, 8, 8, and 8; and
the four lowest numbers for the 1. are 1, 2, 2, and 2.
Supplementary Remarks on Primula farinosa, &c.
P. farinosa.—On September 4th last, after most of the
capsules of this plant had shed their seed, I obtained speci-
mens with unburst capsules from a moist spot on. the Alp
Nova, just above St. Moritz.
In Table XII. and the following tables I have taken an ac-
count of each flower that seemed as if it had ever opened fully
—no matter whether it had produced seeds or not. As each
plant rarely produces more than one umbel (I do not think
that, on an average, more than 1 in 50 does so, and out of
the 42 plants above referred to only 1 had two umbels and
they small ones) the average number and weight of seeds