224 MR. W. B. HEMSLEY ON THE 
birds. On the whole it seems probable that the increase in 
vegetation in Tibet, if any, must be exceedingly slow. On the 
other hand, there is apparently no positive evidence that it ever 
was more general than at the present day. 
VEGETATION 
As illustrated by the Altitudinal limits of Flowering Plants in 
Tibet and the adjoining Countries. 
At the meeting of the Society on April 19th, 1900, my colleague, 
Mr. H. H. W. Pearson, and I gave a preliminary account of the 
collections made by Deasy and Pike, Wellby and Malcolm, and 
Sven Hedin, illustrated by a selection of their plants. Special 
attention was directed to the great altitudes at which some of 
Deasy and Pike’s plants were obtained, based on the tigures given 
on the labels accompanying them. These particulars were pub- 
lished in ‘ Nature,’ Ixii. (1900) p. 46, and in the ‘ Gardeners’ 
Chronicle,’ xxvii. (1900) p. 303, and probably elsewhere. It is 
there stated that the highest point at which flowering plants had 
been found was 19,200 ft. above sea-level, and a list of nine species, 
purporting to have been collected at 19,000 ft. and upwards, is 
given. Subsequently it was ascertained that the altitudes of this 
expedition had been erroneously calculated, and Captain Deasy 
has since supplied the corrected determinations, which appear in 
our “ Enumeration.” According to these corrections, 17,300 ft. 
was the hightest point at which they collected, and only one 
plant, Cheiranthus himalayensis, was found at this elevation. 
Astragalus Heydei and Oxytropis tatarica, originally recorded 
from 19,200 ft., were actually taken at 17,100 ft. It is possible 
that some of the other observations on record in this paper are 
too high, and some of those previously published are certainly so. 
Dr. O. Drude(Petermann’s ‘ Geographische Mitteilungen,’ 1894, 
p. 92), in a review of the report on Bower and Thorold’s collec- 
tion, which is in the Society’s Journal, vol. xxx., questions the 
correctness of the assumption, there enunciated, that 19,000 ft. 
was the greatest altitude at which a flowering plant had been 
collected or observed ; and he goes on to say that Hemsley appears 
to have overlooked the record of Schlagintweit’s discoveries. 
It is true that the original record had been overlooked, as well 
as subsequent versions of it and references to it; and it seems 
desirable to subject Schlagintweit’s data to a critical examination 
