ON LIQUJDAMBAR FORMOSANA, HANCE. Hi 
similar to those of Acer truncatum, Bge., or A. mono, Maxim. In 
June, 1864, Mr. Sampson discovered the tree in woods along the 
West River, in the province of Kwang-tung ; and in April of the pre- 
sent year again met with it about 25 miles S.W. of Canton, in the 
neighbourhood of the celebrated natural caverns of Sai-chii-shan, 
which tunnel the hills for many hundreds of feet in all directions, 
attain a height of 150 feet, and contain pools of very great depth. 
The rock of these caverns is described by Mr. Sampson as " evidently 
of igneous origin, and as apparently a brecciated rock of the trappean 
series, half composed of fragments of feldspathic rock, with some of 
hornblende and other volcanic productions, aud a slight trace of carbo- 
nate of lime in minute vesicles at the junction of some of the im- 
bedded fragments and the matrix." The tree, which is known to the 
Chinese by the name of " Ka-fung-lut," or false Chestnut,— doubtless 
from some resemblance in the fructiferous capitula,— was here planted 
along the road, its leaves affording nutriment to the lava of a moth 
«hich produces a coarse but strong and durable silk, collected by a 
monopolist who farms the right from the authorities. It is worthy of 
remark that two of the most beautiful of American moths, Phalana 
l«na and P. imperatoria, feed on the leaves of L. styraciflua. (Loudon, 
Arb. and Frutic. Brit. iv. 2052.) 
Being desirous of obtaining living specimens of the tree, a Chinese 
was commissioned to procure them ; but the plant he brought, young 
an " without inflorescence, differed so much in aspect, — the leaves 
avmg their lobes less divaricate in direction, narrowed instead of 
roader at the base, less acuminate, and the basal ones more developed, 
«ind the principal nerves being densely hairy, and not smooth as in the 
tormosan specimens and those first gathered by Mr. Sampson,— that 
1 was unable to believe that the two could be conspecific. In Sep- 
ember last, however, in an excursion I made with Mr. Sampson up 
the North River to the Tsing-yuue Pass, about 120 miles above 
anton, in the magnificent dense woods encompassing the renowned 
uddhist monastery of Filoi-tsz, — which, let me note, en passant, is 
' ' ^ e the house of Our Lady at Loreto, to have been transported 
odily, by a special miracle, from its former site to the beautiful loca- 
1 y it now occupies at the river-margin of the deep forest-clothed 
gorge,— we found this handsome tree growing on micaceous schist in 
Rreat abundance, though at that season without flower or fruit, and 
k2 
