Dec. 1898.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 227 



Afghan Delimitation Commission ; and this expedition 

 proved the most fruitful of all, the specimens amounting 

 to about 10,000 specimens., representing 800 species, and 

 75 of them new to science, and of considerable economic 

 and scientific importance. The results are given in the 

 " Transactions of the Linnaz^an Society," and in a paper, 

 " Some Plants of Afghanistan, and their Medicinal Pro- 

 ducts " (Pharm. Journ., 11th Dec. 1886). He again 

 visited Xorth-west India in 1894, He had hoped to go 

 across into Persia to collect the plants yielding Asafoetida, 

 Opoponax, Sagapcnum, and Galhanum, as to which there is 

 still some dubiety, but he was prevented by circumstances 

 from doing so. 



He sent to the Pharmaceutical Society specimens of the 

 Ammoniacum plant, and of a plant he supposed to be 

 Galhanum, though it was not, notwithstanding the very 

 close resemblance of the leaves to the Ferula galhanijlua. 

 He also sent home excellent herbarium specimens of Ferula 

 narthex, from the original locality where Dr. Falconer 

 found it in 1838. This is the same plant that flowered 

 in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. His enormous collec- 

 tions of material were sent to Kew, and have been largely 

 worked up there. In 1863, he was elected a Fellow of 

 the Linmean Society. In 1881, he was elected a Fellow 

 of the Koyal Society of Edinburgh. In 1883, he was 

 elected a Fellow of the Eoyal Society, and was created a 

 CLE. In 1888, he became a Fellow of the Botanical 

 Society of Edinburgh, and in the same year his Alma 

 Mater conferred on him the honorary degree of LL.D. 

 In 1891, he was elected an Honorary Member of the 

 Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. 



The papers contributed by him to our " Transactions " 

 are : — '• The Source of Badshaw or Ptoyal Salep " (read 

 December 1888). Dr. Lindley had previously declared 

 the source to be a tulip, but Dr. Aitchison proved it to be 

 the dried bulb of Allium Madeanii. — " A Summary of the 

 Botanical Features of the County traversed by the Afghan 

 Delimitation Committee during 1884-85" (read 11th April 

 1889). A good example of the interestftig introductions 

 to all his published papers on the Indian Flora, which give 

 descriptions of the vegetation and local conditions of the 



