880 SUMMARY. 
explored. There is scarcely one where any important discovery can be 
expected. The aim and object of collecting abroad has consequently been 
modified; where formerly the botanical collector's chief aim was to make new 
discoveries, and his secondary object to send additional specimens of known 
plants, his first object now is to secure specimens of the most valuable and 
rarest plants which have been signalised as having been already found in 
the country he is visiting; the making new discoveries is a mere subordinate 
and secondary hope. . This alteration in the objects of the collector naturally 
affects the choice of his collecting ground. The question now becomes, not 
what is the country where he is most likely to make new discoveries, but 
what is the nearest and most accessible place where plants likely to be valued 
by the Fellows can be secured. The old question of hardy or greenhouse 
plants of course again presented itself ; but the recent ransacking of Japan by 
such able collectors as Mr. Fortune and Mr. Veitch, as well as its present 
unsettled condition, having put that country out of the question, and the 
numerous importations of late years from California, and the occupation of 
British Columbia and Oregon by the collector of the Scottish Society 
having in like manner disqualified North-west America, the Council have 
found themselves in a measure compelled to place hardy plants somewhat 
in the background on the present occasion. 
The country they have selected for Mr. Weir's operations is the moun- 
tainous district through which the upper part of the river Magdalena flows, 
a part of the Andes in the neighbourhood of Santa Fe de Bogota and Quito. 
The route indicated to Mr. Weir (although a liberal discretion is extended 
to him to deviate from or alter it altogether, should circumstances appear 
to him to render this advisable) is to proceed up the Magdalena to 
Bogota; thence to Quito, and from thence to descend to Guyaquil on the 
Pacific, stopping at suitable places all along the route, and exploring them 
as he goes along—in fact, he goes to work in the Andes of New Granada, 
Quito, and Peru. 
This district has many advantages. The town of Santa Martha at the 
mouth of the Magdalena is only six weeks distant from England, and 
there is regular monthly steam communication with it. The Magdalena 
is navigable for the greatest part if not all the way to Bogota, and steam- 
boats ply regularly upon it; so that there is a rapid and easy communica 
tion, by which Mr. Weir's packages may be brought down from the interior 
and shipped without loss of time to this country. : 
The sierras on both sides of the Magdalena are singularly fruitful in 
beautiful plants, requiring no great amount of heat for their cultivation, 
and more especially in what may be called Alpine or cool-growing orchids. 
Humboldt says of the plants in that district that— 
ku the r : : T. 3 
vich ning, and ella solu pone san be compare tas КЫЫ, ТШШ e 
tre е гү New Granada, Quito, and Peru, where the shade is moist. and 9 
64° to 69°» " е mean temperature of the year (where they are found) being ffo 
_ A proposal to send а collector to a country of orchids might, a few yea? 
since, when orchid-growers were few, haye given the Fellows vantage t° 
exclaim upon the Council for sacrificing the interests of the many to the 
