imperfect and scanty accounts and figures of the Chinese 
authors and early French missionaries. From the same work 
we learn that the drug was known to the Chinese long anterior 
to the Christian era, and was described in a work dedicated to 
_ the Emperor Shen-nung, the father of Chinese agriculture and 
medicine, who lived about 2700 8.c. Also that Marco Polo 
is the only traveller who has visited the districts yielding 
rhubarb, in the mountains of one of which (Tangut) he de- 
scribes it as growing in great abundance ; this, however, is, an 
error, for an account of it will be found in the Travels of Bell 
of Antermony (vol. i. p. 384— 387), who found it in Mongolia, 
growing abundantly near marmot burrows. One of its most 
remarkable characteristics is its stout very distinct stem, 
which, and not the root, is considered to be the source of the 
rhubarb in the view of M. Baillon, and no doubt correctly. 
The rhubarb plant inhabits a vast area of Eastern Tibet 
and Western China, abounding in high plateaus, especially in 
spots enriched by old encampments. The plant here figured 
was sent to the Royal Gardens by M. Soubeiran, and flowered 
An June last, both at Kew and at Mr. Hanbury’s garden at 
Clapham. 
_Descr. Stem as thick as the arm, four to ten inches high, 
divided into several leafing and flowering crowns. Leaves 
one to three feet in diameter, orbicular-ovate or cordate, shal- 
lowly 3- to 7-lobed, pubescent or subvillous, lobes acute and 
acutely irregularly toothed ; nerves stout beneath, flabellate ; 
petiole nearly terete ; ochrea split. /owering-stems two to five 
feet high, erect, stout, leafy, pubescent, bright-green, pani- 
culately branched ; branches spreading ; flowering branchlets 
spreading and drooping , three to five inches long, spiciform, 
very densely clothed with flowers. Flowers one-quarter inch 
in diameter, green; pedicels slender, fascicled, jointed near 
the base. Perianth-segments broadly oblong, rounded at the 
tips, the inner larger, erect at the edges. Stamens nine, as 
long as the perianth, hypogynous. Disk thick, annular, ob- 
securely 3-lobed, crenulate. Stigmas orbicular, peltate. Lruit 
half an inch long, broadly oblong, emarginate, bright red ; 
wings longer and broader than the nucleus.—/. D. H. 
_ Fig. 1, Reduced view of whole plant ; 2, portion of leaf, and 3, of flower- 
Ing branch, both of the natural size ; 4, flower ; 5, stamen and pistil ; 6, pistil 
and disk:—all magnified; 7, fruiting branchlet, not seen; 8, fruit:— 
magnified, 
