274 VIBUKNUM TOMENTOSUM. 



Japan and South China. Mr. Bentham, in 1861, stated that he could 

 not enumerate 80 species common to Japan and Hongkong.* This 

 island, being separated by a strait, of no great depth and only half a 

 mile in width, from the mainland, may, for phytogeographical investiga- 

 tions, be practically regarded as a part thereof; and, indeed, it seems 

 imlikely that any members of its flora are strictly endemic. But the 

 arboreous vegetation of Southern China has long since all but disap- 

 peared. f Meyen, in his ' Pflanzengeographie,' J has suggested that 

 Piuus sinensis originally formed, on the islands and mainland here- 

 abouts, forests not distinguishable from the pine-woods of Germany. 

 There can, I think, be no doubt that, while the flanks of the hills were 

 dotted more or less thickly with this Pine, forming silvfs acerosts, all the 

 valleys and sheltered giens between their spurs were formerly densely 

 clothed with other trees {silvce frondosce), which have been gradually 

 cut down for fuel. A mile or two outside Canton, hundreds of plants 

 of Liqnidamhar formosana, only a foot or two high, are met with, which 

 prove on examination to be merely shoots springing up from old 

 stumps buried beneath the soil, showing that this tree, now all but exter- 

 minated, was once common ; and so eager is tlie search for firewood, 

 that any shrub which has attained half an inch in diameter is almost 

 certain to be ruthlessly cut down. This denudation of arboreous ve- 

 getation, and consequent deprivation of shade and diminution of humi- 

 dity, entail the disappearance of numbers of herbaceous plants, and 

 will serve to explain why so many of the species enumerated in the 

 ' Flora of Hongkong,' amomiting to one-seventli of the entire number, 

 had not been met with on the adjacent continent ; the sparse fishing 

 population of the island, engaging in agriculture so :far only as was 



* Fl. Hongkongensis, pref., p. 15. 



t Mr. Albert P)iekmore has, I find, made a similar remark. He thus writes 

 in his ' Sketch of a Journey from Canton to Hankow ' (Journ. N. China Branch 

 R. As. Soc, N.S., iv. 1), " This nakedness appears to be a universal characteristic 

 of moimtpan scenery in China, but it is not the fault of the soil or the climate, 

 for wherever the little Pines are suffered to rise they show a vigorous growth. 

 The cause of tliis universal deficiency in forests seems to be the frequency of 

 rebellions that have swept to and fro over the whole empire like a desolating 

 scourge. ... It is true they do raise some trees in a few places ; but over the 

 wide area that I have travelled, not a tenth part of the soil is thus improved 

 that might be, and then the trees are generally cut down before they attain 

 any size. . . . The old trees occasionally seen in groves around the Buddhist 

 temples, that only owe their preservation to tlie superstitions of the destroyers, 

 show what splendid timber thousands of hillsides in China might yield." 



J Ray Soc. translation, p. 131. 



