xm,c,8 Merrill: Flora of Loh Fau Mountain 125 



28, the date of our departure on the return trip to Canton, I 

 made a collection aggregating 544 numbers, independent of the 

 extensive collections made by Mr. Levine in the same period. 



Among the results of eighteen days' actual field work has 

 been the accrediting of representatives of the following genera 

 to the Kwangtung flora, none of them having previously been 

 recorded from that Province : Coniogramme, Hypolepis, Botrych- 

 ium, Polytoca, Agrostis, Herminium, Skimmia, Tristylium, Epilo- 

 bium, and Brandisia; the list may be increased by the addition 

 of Alnus, of which sterile specimens, not in condition for further 

 identification, were secured. A total of fifty-three species is here 

 recorded from Kwangtung Province for the first time, including 

 twenty-four that I have described as new. 



The results secured indicate, as might be expected, that al- 

 though about 2,575 different species of Pteridophy'ta and Sperma- 

 tophyta are now known from Kwangtung Province, extensive 

 additions to the known flora are to be expected as the result 

 of intensive field work in any of the lesser known areas, es- 

 pecially in the mountainous regions. Loh Fau Mountain is in- 

 dicated by Messrs. Dunn and Tutcher 3 as one of the areas that 

 is botanically explored, yet the short period that I was able to 

 utilize in field work there in 1917, and the few days spent there 

 in the previous year, have yielded material on which a relatively 

 large number of species have been recorded as additions to the 

 known flora of the province. A glance at the map accompany- 

 ing their publication will at once reveal the fact that the greater 

 part of Kwangtung Province has scarcely been visited, much 

 less explored, by any botanist or collector. The work carried 

 on by Mr. Levine so far, chiefly at low altitudes in the immediate 

 vicinity of Canton, and in a region well-known botanically, con- 

 tinues to yield additions to the known flora. While it is true 

 that continued field work in Kwangtung Province will yield mate- 

 rial that will to a large degree duplicate collections already made, 

 still such collections are necessary to give us an adequate con- 

 ception of the characters of the flora, the range of the species, 

 their relative abundance, their range of variation, their native 

 names, and their economic uses. Southern China may justly be 

 classed with those parts of the world that are very inadequately 

 explored, and it will take intensive work over a period of many 

 years before we are in a position properly to judge the extent 

 of its flora. At the present time we can hardly state that more 

 than a good start has been made in this direction. It is scarcely 



* Fl. Kwangtung and Hongkong, Kew Bull. Add. Series 10 (1912) 1-370. 



