BOTANICON SINICUM. a 
As has been detailed in a lately published paper on the early 
history of botanical discoveries in China, it is to the Jesuit mis- 
sionaries that we are indebted for the earliest notices of the more 
conspicuous plants of China and their native names; but their 
early publications on botanical matters contain merely popular 
descriptions and accounts of Chinese plants, and do not deal with 
scientific names, ‘The first scientific work treating of the Flora 
of China which attempts to give the Chinese equivalents for the 
botanical names of some Chinese plants, is Loureiro’s Flora 
cochinchinensis, 1788. I should also mention in this place Osbeck’s 
Voyage to China and the East-Indies, published about thirty years 
earlier than the Fiora cochin. Osbeck, in enumerating and de- 
scribing 244 plants which he had collected near Canton and 
which had been determined by Linnzus, occasionally gives the 
transliterated Chinese names, but these are generally sadly per- 
verted. As regards the Chinese names of plants found in Loureiro’s 
book, they are for the greater part correct, and have subsequently 
served as a basis for investigations of the same kind. 
Tn 1822 Morrison gave in his English and Chinese Dictionary, 
p. 174, under the head of “Flowers,” a list of plants which flower 
in each month of the year in Canton, containing 148 native and 
Scientific names, for which Morrison states he was indebted to — 
J. Reeves. J. Russel Reeves, who died in 1877, aged 73 years, 
resided for a long time in Canton. He was in the East-India 
Company’s service, and ‘seems to have arrived in China about 
1815. Reeves was an able naturalist and made valuable botanical 
collections. He published an account of some of the articles of 
the Materia medica employed by the Chinese. 1826. 
The 14th chapter of Bridgman’s Chinese Chrestomathy (Macao 
1841) deals with Chinese Botany. This as well as the two other 
chapters on Natural History (13 and 15, Mineralogy and Zoology) 
were prepared by Dr.S. Wells Williams, the well-known sinologue, 
now Professor at New Haven. We find there 445 names of Chinese 
plants, with the corresponding popular English or scientific appel- 
lations. A similar list, comprising 353 names of Chinese plants, is 
given in Dr. Williams’ English and Chinese Vocabulary in the 
Court Dialect, Macao 1844, under the word “Flower.” It seems 
