340 
ON THE OCCURRENCE OF CRYPTOTMNIA CAN A- 
DENSIS, Be Cand., IN SOUTHERN CHINA. 
By H. F. Hance, Ph.D., etc. 
f 
la August, 1863, my friend Mr, Francis Parry gave me a specimen 
of an Umbellifer gathered by him during the same month at Si-chu- 
shan, about forty miles west of Canton, which I have since ascertained 
to be Cryptotcenia Canadensis, De Cand. ; and compared with a Con- 
necticut specimen received from Professor Asa Gray. 
The detection of this phmt in the extreme south-eastern corner of 
Asia is a very remarkable fact in phyto-geography. On the North 
American continent, it ranges from Canada as far south as Louisiana 
but the most western station for it of which I am cognizant is near 
Westport, in the State of Missouri, where it was gathered by Mr. 
Creutzfeldt in 1853, on Lieut. Gunnison's exploration for a railway 
route from Fort Leavenworth to the Great Basin, south of the Great 
Salt Lake: It has also been detected in Japan, and is one of the many 
curious instances of the reappearance there of species found only on the 
eastern side of the North American continent, which presents so sin- 
gular a problem, the solution of which has been attempted by Professor 
A. Gray, in his celebrated and masterly paper on the Flora of Japan, 
and its reh^tion to that of Norch America, based on Mr, Charles Wright's 
collections. M. Maximowicz, who gave me a specimen collected by 
him near Nagasaki, informs me that it grows sparingly in shady woods. 
It has not hitherto been met with in any part of Siberia, In Davuria, 
Manchuria, Mongolia, nor, indeed, in any single spot of the whole 
Asiatic continent ; and, as the Japanese locality and that which T now 
record are separated by a difference of exactly ten degrees of latitude, 
the circumstance is very curious. China has, however, been so very 
imperfectly explored, even in the vicinity of the now long-established 
ports of trade, that it would be unsafe to form any conclusions on a 
few isolated facts. I believe a careful exploration of tlie southern pro- 
vinces will eventually show that many northern Asiatic forms extend 
further south than is supposed. As an instance, Patrinia scabiosifolia, 
Lk., a plant belonging to a distinctly septentrional genus, and which, 
though found in Davuiia, on the Amur, the Ussuri, and in the neigh- 
bourhood of Peking, has never, I believe, been met with to the south 
of that capital, was gathered by me some years ago on the summit of 
