7 
Pe ot | 
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366 
XLIX.—A CONTRIBUTION TO THE FLORA OF HAINAN 
(CHINA). 
S. T. Dunn. 
The flora of Hainan is as yet very imperfectly known and the 
few botanical collections that have been made there were almost 
entirely from the low lying regions in the north of the Island. 
nd Sampson* paid a short visit to Kiung-chou-fu in 1866 
but collected only near that city, which is a few miles from the 
northern coast. In 1868 Sir Rutherford Alcock, then British 
Minister at Pekin, sent Swinhoe to investigate the commercial 
possibilities of the island and that energetic naturalist in the course 
of his enquiries penetrated as far into the interior as Ling-mun 
where the Li tribes come down from their southern fastnesses to 
Chinese collectors were also sent from Hongkong by Ford while 
Superintendent of the Botanical and Forestry Department in that 
Colony and the writer, his successor there, made many efforts to 
obtain collections from the interior and especially from the sacred 
Ng-shi-shan or five-finger mountain which lies rather to the south 
of the centre. 
The island of Hainan is about two-thirds the size of Ireland and 
0 
infested with land leeches of a specially attentive kind. These 
obstacles would not however deter the Chinese collectors who have 
been sent. They have been prevented from reaching the central dis- 
tricts by their fear of the wild Li people who resent any intrusion by 
the Chinese into their country. B.C. Henry succeeded in reaching 
the neighbourhood of Ng-shi-shan but was unable to ascend it. 
In 1908 the Japanese collector Katsumata was engaged by the 
writer with the special object of collecting plants on Ng-shi-shan 
for the Hongkong Herbarium and the plants deseribed or men- 
tioned below are chiefly from his collection. 
He escribed the mountain as densely clothed with forest nearly 
to the summit, where it rises into (probably five) bare and rugged 
peaks, The few other travellers who have been fortunate enough 
to see it on one of the rare occasions when it was not partly hidden 
by clouds corroborate this description. 
Saad sub floribus arcta, reliqua distantia, omnia subsessilia, 
elliptica, apice acuta, basi cuneata, 7-12 em. longa, papyracea, 
* Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China, 635. 
