ON CUDRANIA TRILOBA AND ITS USES IN CHINA, 149 
inclined to separate this form from C. triloba Hance, but I cannot 
help thinking that the greater luxuriance of the whole plant may 
fairly be accounted for by its having exchanged its home on the 
thin soil of the Kiangsou hill-sides for the rich alluvial earth of the 
Yangtze delta, where it has been long cultivated. There is in the 
Herbarium of the British Museum a corresponding specimen, 
collected by Sir George Staunton in 1798, in the western ) 
antung Province. Lord Macartney’s aaa: to which Staunton 
ached, traversed this province only along the line of the 
Grand Canal ¢ through an alluvial country, and there is therefore 
reason to suppose that his specimens were, like my own, gathered 
from a cultivated ae I sag add that my own observations pan 
not enabled me to detect any differences pobiee the wild a 
cultivated fates as regards either ete or fruits : 
In the very valuable series of reports on silk-pr or RSNOe: issued 
by the nspector- General of Chinese Maritime Custom n 1881, 
il 
gathered entirely from Chinese works, and t 
appended to his Agus are by no mean _~ vita as those in the 
‘Chi-wu-ming,’ to which I tank already 20 rred. 
M. Isidore Hedde states in the paper ioe quoted that he had 
brought to France a growing tché ‘cs which had been obtained for 
him by a missionary in Chusan, but the plant perished before — 
reaching Paris. I may here note that I saw last year, at ihe 
feet high, which, if my memory serves me, had been sent em 
Shanghai. Its leaves theses, to be generally entire, or only 
obscurely lobed. 
As further bearing on the identity of the ché tree with Dr. 
Hance’s species, some Chinese writers describe the ché fruit as 
resembling a mulberry, which the fruit of C. triloba certainly does. 
By others the ché seeds are said to be like pepper the 
specimens I have examined the seeds are straw- coloured or light 
brown, so that this comparison seems to require some stretch of 
imagination, unless indeed the appearance of the seeds changes at a 
later stage. Finally, Rumphius (Herb. Amboin. V., p. 24) has 
described the Javanese Cudrania oe furnishing a yellow dye; and 
on the theory of the ché tree being a species of the same genus, it is 
not surprising to find it used by the Chinese for the same purpose. 
here is, it must be admitted, a certain vagueness in all the 
Chinese descriptions, which tempts one to think that the same 
plant which had been taken by one author as the ché tree may have 
been referred by another to the nu-ché. As regards the economical 
value of the species, the further most important question remains 
to be studied of how far the ché leaves are restricted by the Chinese 
. the rearing of the wild varieties of the silkworm, and to what 
xtent they may actually be employed in producing the Wusieh 
e6esdiil, the excellent quality of which is well known to the silk- 
trade, 
