52 THE CHINESE RICE-PAPER PLANT. 
bringing a fine strong plant, thriving beautifully when it was put on 
board the ship Bentinck, but which died on its passage, and reached — 
your hands without any signs of life.” 
The fate of this plant is further narrated in a letter dated Hong-Kong, 
September Ist, 1850, addressed by J. O. Bowring, Esq., to his friend - 
Major Champion, who favoured me with a sight of it. — 
** Hong-Kong, September 1st, 1851. 
“I must write a line to let you know that specimens of the ‘ Rice- 
paper plant, root, leaf, and stems, are going home by this mail to Sir 
W. J. Hooker. They were procured by Mr. C. S. Compton, the brother 
of our Compton, from the erew of a Formosa junk (which was wrecked) 
who were picked up by the vessel in which he was a passenger,—at least, — 
I believe so. Compton showed me a leaf of the plant. It seemed like — 
. a good-sized Sycamore leaf, very downy on the underside; but it was 80 
shrivelled up, that it was scarcely possible to say what it was; and — 
being the only one he had left, Compton would not let me steep it in 
hot water. Isaw a small root also, a curious-looking thing, apparently of 
a marsh or water-loving plant, the pith running down to the very end. k = 
seemed to be jointed and was furnished with fibres at certain distances. — 
Compton has magnificent specimens of the pith, as long as my arm and — 
as thick as my wrist..... It is quite certain now that it is a production 
of Formosa, whence large quantities are brought over in native craft to 
Chinchew, where it is cut into thin sheets for the manufacture of arti- — 
ficial flowers, its principal use. It must occur in great plenty, as it is — 
a very cheap article there. Compton has given me a beautiful piece of - 
the pith, cleaned and prepared for cutting into sheets. Tt is as white - 
as snow, about 33 inches long, and a solid cylinder of rather more — 
than an inch in diameter. An incision has been made down to the 
centre, or nearly so, through the whole length; so that this piece would | 
furnish several sheets 34 inches square. From the size of some of the — 
sheets we see, it is evident that the pith, after being cleaned and pre- 
pared, must sometimes measure more than 2 or eyen 21 inches in dia- 
meter: so that the gigantie size of the plant, as represented in the 
Chinese drawing which Sir W. Hooker copied in his Journal, may not 
be out of nature. As we have an opium vessel stationed in the Chin- 
chew River, I shall make a strong effort to get some living plants 
through our schroffs. The name of the place from which the wrecked 
men said it came, is Chick-Cham-fan, in the district of Cheong-fa, in — 
