86 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



Mr. Wilson's second volume. We could have wished to know 

 more of his adventures during the eleven years he spent in China 

 — at first on behalf of Messrs. Veitch, afterwards under the 

 auspices of the Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum. As his 

 map shows, he must have toiled along many a breakneck track, 

 escaped perils, witnessed remarkable scenes of which he tells us 

 nothing. A too modest estimate of his narrative powers, above 

 all the desire, as far as possible, not to re-traverse a field where he 

 has had several forerunners, are the considerations that have led 

 him to restrict his personal story. 



The provinces of Hupeh, from Ichang westward, and of 

 Szechuan, including in the latter the little known Chino-Tibetan 

 marches, is the region dealt with in these volumes. The difficulties 

 of travel in this part of the Middle Kingdom must be enormous, 

 entailing as it does carriage of bed and bedding, food and cooking 

 utensils, over some of the most villainous tracks trodden by foot 

 of man ; nor should that sign of respectability, a chair, be 

 omitted, nor, significant item, a store of insect powder ! So pro- 

 vided Mr. Wilson fared cheerily onward, ever on the q2ii vive for 

 botanical spoil, while his companion, Mr. Walter Zappy, busied 

 himself with the rich fauna of the country. We pass with him 

 in spirit through parts of Hupeh hitherto unvisited by Europeans. 

 He takes us across Eichthofen's Red Basin of Szechuan, with its 

 wonderful irrigation canals, and so into the mountainous western 

 borderland. For him the mountains had a special call ; it was 

 on them he expected to make his principal finds, and, as many a 

 herbarium and the Plantce, WilsoniancB, now in course of publica- 

 tion, testify, the harvest he reaped was indeed a splendid one. 

 And it was at the very threshold of this marvellous region, the 

 home of the richest temperate flora of the globe, that Maries 

 turned in 1879 under the impression that Eobert Fortune had 

 already secured virtually all that was worth collecting in China ! 



Sixty-eight thousand specimens, comprising about five thousand 

 species and seeds of over fifteen hundred plants, were the si^olia 

 opima Mr. Wilson brought home. How many of these species 

 are new to science cannot at present be stated ; but we do know 

 that the labours of recent travellers, such as Mr. Pratt, Professor 

 Henry of Cambridge (not Dublin, Mr. Wilson !), and the French col- 

 lectors, together with those now under notice, have revolutionised 

 even the best-informed botanists' notions of the Chinese flora. Mr. 

 Wilson's predecessors, however, have given us no record like the 

 present volumes, with their many illustrations of scenery, their 

 exciting descriptions — at one place the author had to pass through 

 masses of Cypripediums so dense as to render crushing the flowers 

 unavoidable ; their carefully worked-out zones of mountain vege- 

 tation and valuable information for botanist, horticulturist and 

 forester. Several excellent wild fruits were found, which, by 

 grafting, will be the starting point, it is to be hoped, for new and 

 improved varieties. We agree with Mr. Wilson in thinking that 

 the value of certain Chinese reputed medicines should be enquired 

 into ; true, some of the remedies now in use are as absurd as 



