NEWS NOTES AND CURRENT COMMENT. 123 



Mexicana is becoming a troublesome weed at the Cape of Good 

 Hope, according to the Government Botanist, Mr. Mac Ovvan. 



Dr. Augustine Henry predicts, in a letter to the Kew Bulletin 

 of the December issue, 1897, that in the twentieth century, the 

 province of Yunnan, China, where he is now collecting, will be 

 found to have ten thousand species of phanerogams and ferns. 

 Many difficulties are encountered in botanizing in the country. In 

 the words of the writer, "Money is not what is wanted, but time, 

 oceans of time. Nothing astonishes people at home so much as the 

 fact, a real fact, that in countries like China you can not do every- 

 thing with money. Patience is more valuable. I can get a good 

 deal of work out of Chinese on a trip, when I am with them, but 

 not otherwise. The root of the matter is an absence of nervous 

 energy." 



This is the same explorer who, ten years or so ago, made an 

 attempt to employ the natives in collecting, but as they continually 

 brought in the same things, a premium was offered for new plants. 

 The Chinese thereupon fell to making new species in a manner 

 which would have quite confused the ardent devotees of the 

 practise in some other parts of the world, and, curiously enough, 

 this was accomplished by a process of synthesis (not of segregation). 

 Persiflage aside, however, the stems, foliage, and flowers of differ- 

 ent plants were so cleverly joined that the finished product eluded 

 casual examination, and, it is said, one of these "new species" was 

 actually published and illustrated in the Icones Plantarum; fur this 

 statement we can not vouch, but if it be true, the people of the Royal 

 Gardens may remember that California discovered thirty years ago — 

 and celebrated it in verse — that the " heathen Chinee" had devel- 

 oped certain characteristics far more highly than members of our 

 English-speaking race. 



The subscription price, $1.50, for Vol. VII, 1899, is now due, 

 and should be remitted without delay to Ehythea, Berkeley. Cali- 

 fornia. No. 1, Vol. VII, will be published January 5, 1899. 



