LETTEU FROM DR. H. F. UANCE. 455 



cans^ and many Oraminece. I have also got good fruiting speci- 

 mens of my Bhatfinus oreigenes^ confirming my surmise that it 

 belongs to the section Frangula. How wonderfully little has 

 been done for the investigation of this flora (or, rather, had 

 been, up to the appearance of the ' Flora Hongkongensis '), is 

 convincingly shown by the fact that the hills here, on Dane's 

 Inland, where I now write, are quite covered, towards the summit, 

 with Apocopu Wighti% Munro, Aristida cJiinensis, Munro, and 

 Eriachne ehinensis, mihi, — all three grasses only described within 

 tlie last few years. The latter is the " Aira seminibus hirsutis, 

 aristis terminalibus flore longioribus " of Osbeck's Travels, who 

 gathered it here ; arid I find, from a note of Munro's in the 

 * Linuean Journal,' that he had named it in MS. U. Ilooheriy 

 you having found the same species in Chittagong. Yet, not- 

 withstanding, this place has been for more than a century 

 the anchorage of ships trading to Canton ; and, in the E. I. Co.'s 

 time, their vessels carried surgeons, some of whom must surely 

 have had a predilection for botany. Again, the temple where I 

 slept is only six miles outside the walls of Canton, and is often 

 visited by pic-nic parties ; and yet, though the small wood sur- 

 rounding it has plenty of Quercus Jtssa^ Champ., some Casta- 

 nopsis chinensiSj mihi, and two trees of Liguidamher formosana^ 

 mihi, about 80 feet high, none of these si)ecies were known a few 

 years ago; and the JPygeum I spoke of at the commencement, 

 together with my P. phceostictum, are to this day undescribed. 

 Botanists, indeed, have every reason to be grateful to the founders 

 of these monasteries ; for it is around them alone that are found 

 the remnants of the arboreous and frutescent vegetation of 

 China, and of such portions of the herbaceous flora as demand 

 shade and shelter as necessary conditions of existence. Meyen, 

 m his * Pflanzengeographie,' expressed his opinion that the 

 hills here were originally thickly clothed to their bases with 

 Pinus ; and I suspect the real state of the case to be, that this 

 tree occurred thickly towards the bases and along the lower 

 slopes, scattered and isolated on the exposed flanks, whilst the 

 inner converging slopes, running down ravines and sheltered 

 from the violence of the winds, were occupied by mixed dense 

 woods. At present the search for wood is so active, and every 

 little shrub is so cut up, that the denuded hillsides give no juster 

 idea of the original flora of China than a burnt moor would of 

 our home vegetation. But I speak only of South China (wliich 

 alone I know), and from direct personal observation. 



