possible for us to know something of the region in the hinterland 

 of China and the Thibetan frontier, his travels and collections 

 extending over a period of eleven years. Some idea of the extent 

 of his work will be gained by remembering that he has collected 

 some 65,000 specimens, comprising about 5,000 species, and sent 

 home seeds of over 1,500 different plants. Thousands of these 

 are now growing in England at Messrs. Veitch and Son's and 

 an equal, or greater number, mostly woody plants, at the Arnold 

 Arboretum in this country. It is difficult to speak with restraint 

 of the importance of these additions to our cultivated plants, 

 and it is no exaggeration to say that Mr. Wilson's plants 

 form the most important collection ever brought out of China. 

 Frequent scattered notices of these plants have appeared in the 

 Gardener's Chronicle and the Botanical Magazine. Many of the 

 finer species, horticulturally, are already in the trade, mostly in 

 England, but some are to be had here. Of course, the most 

 complete collection of the woody plants is at the Arnold Ar- 

 boretum, but many private estates have some of them and there 

 is a collection of over 400 species now at the Brooklyn Botanic 

 Garden. The scientific results of these remarkable expeditions 

 have already appeared, in part, as Plantae Wilsonianae, published 

 at the Arnold Arboretum. Professor C. S. Sargent has con- 

 tributed to the present volume a technical introduction on the 

 relationship of the tree flora of China and eastern North America. 

 It would be extraordinary if a traveller and botanist of such 

 accomplishments could not make an interesting narrative of his 

 journeys in this all but unknown country, and such the present 

 work- proves to be. It is an intimate and personal account of the 

 author's travels, especially in the vast province of Szechuan and 

 the Thibetan frontier, and the wealth of botanical information 

 is astounding. Very few of us realize the diversity and richness 

 of this temperate flora in western China (it is the richest in the 

 world) reaching its greatest profusion at, and westward of a 

 point, some thousand miles up the Yangste River (Mr. Wilson 

 says Yangste-Kiang is unintelligible to all the Chinese he has 

 ever met, and that the name is simply Yangste). No review 

 could do adequate justice to the botanical features of Mr. Wilson's 



