108 BOTANICON SINICUM. 
Although Europe abounds in botanists, the number of those from 
whom a reliable determination of Chinese plants may be expected 
is very limited. For not only a thorough knowledge of the Flora 
of Eastern Asia is required for this purpose, but the botanist who 
sets himself to examine plants, and especially exotic plants, must 
be in a position which will enable him to refer (for the purpose 
of identification and comparison of species) to some complete 
general herbaria in Europe. N ow-a-days all botanists agree in 
the view that it is impossible to recognize and identify plants from 
descriptions only. To decide whether a particular plant is identical 
with another already described, it is necessary to compare it with 
an authentic specimen of the latter, and the author who proposes a 
new specific name, is bound to prove by direct examination of 
specimens of all the other species of the same genus or allied forms 
that the plant in question has really not been previously described 
Prof. A. Bunge, in his Enum. plant. Chine bor. (1831) No. 238, 
took a kind of yellow Jasmin, which he first observed in Peking, 
to be identical with Jasminum angulare Vahl, a plant of the Cape 
of Good Hope (white flowers). He evidently relied only on an im- 
perfect description of this plant. The Peking plant was sub- 
sequently proved by Lindley to be quite a distinct species, which 
then was named Jasminum nudiflorum.—Owing to the same want 
of other collections for comparison, Prof. Bunge described Prunus 
trichocarpa as a new species from Peking, But this plant had 
long before been described by Thunberg as Pr. tomentosa (from 
Japan).—The same author describes 1. ¢. No.81 the wild growing 
Jujube of Peking as a spinose variety of Zizyphus vulgaris Lam. 
One of our first botanical authorities in Europe, to whom I had 
sent specimens of this thorny shrub, very common in North-China, 
suggested to me that it was Z Lotus; and the specimens of this 
shrub of Northern Africa kindly sent to me by him prove that there 
is indeed no difference between Z. Lotus and Bunge’s Z. vulgaris, 
var. spinosa.—There are in the mountains West of Peking two 
species of Syringa, distinguishable at first sight by the size of their 
leaves. For a long time the botanists of the Botanical Gardens at 
St. Petersburg considered the large-leaved species to be S. villosa 
Vahl, first observed near Peking in the middle of the last century by — 
