sent me seeds of a tree identified with Syringa japonica, 
Dene. The plants raised from these grew with great 
rapidity, attaining fifteen to sixteen feet in height in 1886, 
with a clear, straight stem, light red, thin, smooth bark, 
coriaceous leaves five to six inches long, and bearing in 
July immense compound panicles eighteen to twenty- 
four inches long by sixteen to eighteen inches broad, of 
small white flowers, almost destitute of smell. The tree 
continues long in bloom, and the leaves fall early, without 
changing colour. It promises to be one of the most 
magnificent of all the flowering trees that are hardyin 
this climate (Massachusets).”” The only exception I have 
to make in this description is that in the Kew plant the | 
flowers had a sweet heavy smell, like those of Privet. A 
The geographical range of S. amurensis is very wide, 
from Manchuria and North China to Corea and Japan, 
presenting slight varieties which have been formulated by 
Maximovicz, and which depend chiefly on the amount of 
or absence of the very sparse hairs on the under-surface 
and margins of the leaves; to which in the case of var. 
pekinensis may possibly be added a difference of habit, for 
of a specimen of that plant he says (writing in 1888) that 
it formed a slender, tree-like shrub, ten feet high, with 
long, flexuous, graceful branches. The Kew plant of this 
variety does not, however, conform to that character, but 
resembles a dwarf specimen of S. amurensis. Decaisne 
describes, as a fourth species of the section Ligustrina, 
S. rotundifolia, of Manchuria, a plant I have not seen, but 
which is most probably another variety of S. amurensis. 
There are indigenous specimens of S. amurensis in the 
Kew Herbarium from the Amur River, collected ‘by 
Maximovicz; from Peking, Bretschneider; top of Mt. 
Conolly, T. L. Bullock; and the Yalu River, Corea, 
H. E. M. James, Esq. In the Arboretum of the Royal — 
Gardens, Kew, it forms a shrub flowering in June. 
Deser.—A shrub or small tree, with red-brown bark, 
quite glabrous, or sparsely hairy on the back and margins. 
of the leaves. Leaves three to six inches long, shortly — 
petioled, broadly ovate, or almost orbicular, obtusely 
cuspidate, coriaceous, dark green and shining above, paler 
beneath ; nerves six to eight pairs, divergent. Panicles 
attaining one to two feet in length, and sixteen to eighteen 
