106 BOTANICON SINICUM. 
of the Flore of the interior of Africa and Australia. Those 
regions of the Empire especially to which the majority of plants 
described in Chinese books refer, have never been trodden by the 
foot of a botanical collector. Thus the greater part of the vege- 
table productions detailed in Chinese works on Materia medica 
and Botany are unknown to Europeans. If the plants in ques- 
tion are not of common occurrence in the provinces visited by 
them, it is generally impossible to make anything of the vague 
descriptions given by Chinese botanists, Occasionally the 
drawings found in the previously mentioned native botanical 
works enable us to determine at least the genus or the order to 
which the plants belong. On the other hand, there may be in 
European collections plants from China, noticed also in Chinese 
works, but the native names have not been added to the scientific 
ones. 
The only exact method of ascertaining the botanical names 
corresponding to Chinese denominations of plants is to obtain the 
plants in naturd and to determine them, I may however observe 
that, although the common cultivated plants are known under the 
same Chinese names all over the Empire, many other plants, 
especially drugs, go under different local names in different pro- 
vinces. Li Shi chen, the author of the Pen ts‘ao kang mu, and 
other authors before him, have attempted to bring these synonyms 
together, but perhaps they have not always been correct in their 
identifications. In some instances also the same Chinese names 
are applied to distinct plants in different parts of China. It is 
therefore desirable that naturalists, who collect native names of 
plants, should always state in what part of China these names 
are used. 
The first difficulty we encounter in identifying Chinese names 
of plants with the scientific appellations, is to secure trustworthy 
and competent natives to procure authentic specimens of the 
plants desired. The majority of drugs dealt with in Chinese 
treatises on Materia medica are yielded by wild growing mountain 
plants. The mountains of Chibli, Shantung, Shansi, Honan,* 
__ggf8,Lhave been informed by missionaries, who had lived for some time in Honan, that 
BS FR HG Ata di tricot the prefecture of Wei hui fu in North Honan is «well 
