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Conclusions.
1. The original description of the species by Kirk is not quite accurate. The number of the leaves is not abnormally small, being frequently 5 and may be as many as 9. The style, when the achene is ripe, is curved, not straight. The flowering-period is late October and November, not December. The petals number 5 to 8.
2. It is one member of a xerophytic plant community, or association, of very ancient origin, and is specially adapted, like some others of that community, to live upon a limestone soil, or, rather, debris formation.
3. Though its habitat is now, so far as is known, extremely restricted, it must formerly, with its associates, have been distributed over a far more extensive area of Tertiary limestone beds. This conclusion supports that reached by Speight (1915, p. 345) upon quite different evidence.
4. It is the product of a period of drought or steppe climate, which directly caused the development of its xerophytic characters; and in this it resembles the other members of the community to which it belongs, one which was formerly, in all probability, far richer in species, and perhaps even in genera, than it is now.
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5. It is adapted only for life under very special and peculiar conditions— e.g., its confinement to gentle gradients and to a limestone soil—which conditions have been provided and preserved for it, by a series of fortunate chances, in one small locality only (so far as is known at present).
6. Its life-history may be thus summed up conjecturally: Originating in the very remote past during a period of drought (which was probably very long) somewhere within or not far from an extensive area of Tertiary limestone, this plant acquired marked xerophytic characters and flourished, maintaining itself with ease, and as the area upon which it grew was slowly and gradually eroded (or perhaps, in parts, more rapidly by glaciation) it was restricted to areas continually diminishing in size and farther and farther separated from one another, until it remained in only one very limited area peculiarly situated and adapted to its needs. Here, as in its original state, it had little or no severe competition to meet and overcome, and for countless ages it has continued to exist there, surviving at least one great period of glaciation, which its habitat escaped; at least one pluvial epoch, which could not be favourable to it; and finally the various dangers resultant upon human occupation—depredations of stock and of hares and rabbits, pests and blights, and agricultural necessities and accidents, such as the plough and the wax match. Thus within its own narrow nook, secure from the competition of rivals, this strange plant, relic of an earlier day and clime, is passing slowly and, it may be permitted to fancy, unreluctantly away before our eyes in an age-long euthanasia.
I desire to express my great obligation of Mr. R. Speight, who with infinite trouble and pains took photographs of the plant in situ and of the locality; to Dr. W. P. Evans, who also photographed and sketched the locality and took the necessary observations of heights and levels and the measurements of the area; to Mr. A. E. Flower, who, with Dr. Evans, assisted me in the task of counting the plants; and to Dr. L. Cockayne, who has most kindly read over the whole of the paper and given me the benefit of his invaluable suggestions and criticisms.