Chinese forms under cultivation increases, however, 
questions of relationship and status have arisen in con- 
nection with some of them; and certain plants which 
when first communicated appeared from the descriptive 
standpoint to be easy of discrimination have been found 
in our living collections to display characteristics which 
tend to cast doubt on earlier conclusions. The species 
which forms the subject of our plate is one that gives 
rise to such an inquiry. It is one of a series of forms, 
undoubtedly very closely allied, which certainly con- 
stitute a natural group, fairly readily distinguishable 
from each other by differences in the size and colour of 
the flower and by some amount of variation in the 
development of the calyx, but which, nevertheless, in 
the opinion of Mr. Hutchinson, who has bestowed on 
them much critical study, may all be very well referred 
to a single species. So far as regards the calyx, which 
in many groups of species in the genus affords a constant 
and distinctive feature, we find in the group under con- 
sideration that it may be almost obsolete, as in the case 
of the original specimens, collected on Mount Omei in 
Szechuan by the Rev. Mr. Faber, on which 2. concinnum 
was based, and as is again the case in the plant now 
figured ; or it may be well developed with oblong-lanceo- 
late ciliate lobes as in the plant described by Professor 
Bureau and Mr. Franchet as 2. yanthinum. Yet except 
as regards their calyces there is no very tangible feature 
wherein &. concinnum and R. yanthinum differ, and 
having regard to the fact that in the extensive series of 
specimens, both wild and cultivated, which Mr. Hutchin- 
son has examined, there is a complete gradation between 
these two extremes, the question as to their possible 
identity calls for consideration. The fact that sometimes 
in the same truss may be found a calyx in which all or 
some of the lobes are well developed, and others in which 
all the lobes are much reduced or practically obsolete is 
strongly corroborative of Mr. Hutchinson’s view. Among 
cultivated examples it is found that there is a con- 
siderable variation in the size of the corolla in plants of 
different age or under different treatment, and the same 
feature in wild specimens may be due also to difference 
of age or to a dissimilar habitat. Variation in the colour 
