INTRODUCTION. 



Position and size of area. — Kwangtung is the southernmost pro- 

 vince of China and occupies the whole of the southern coast line of 

 the empire. Bounding it upon the north are the maritime province 

 of Fokien and the inland ones of Kiangsi and Hunan, while Kwangsi 

 lies immediately to the west. At its south-west corner it touches 

 for a few miles the French Indo-Chinese colony of Tongking. Its 

 length amounts to 600 miles lying nearly east and west, but it 

 nowhere recedes more than 250 miles from the open sea. Its area, 

 about 68,000 square mUes, is rather less than that of Great Britain. 

 Some 300 small islands lie off the coast, among which is Hongkong. 



Climate. — The province is more than half within the tropics and 

 is characterised for the_ greater part of the year by hot damp 

 weather, during which periods of strong sunshine alternate with 

 downpours of warm torrential rain amounting to some 70 inches in 

 all. The south-west monsoon, in which these conditions prevail, 

 breaks upon the coast rather suddenly about April and continues to 

 blow with more or less regularity for six or seven months, gradually 

 failing in October or November, to give place to the winter monsoon 

 from the opposite point of the compass. The long succession of 

 rainstorms and the usually cloud-laden sky are then succeeded as a 

 rule by several months of cool weather accompanied by clear pale 

 blue skies and a complete absence of rain. The smaller streams 

 gradually dry up and the grass hills assume their winter colouring 

 of pale brown. 



Though the winters are pleasantly cool, frosts are of very rare 

 occurrence, except on the highest ground. Even there they are 

 infrequent and of short duration. 



The succession of extremes of wet and dry weather naturally 

 exerts a profound influence on the vegetation, but quite as important 

 in this respect are doubtless the periodical visits of typhoons to 

 which the coastal regions are liable at all times, but especially during 

 the late summer. These brief but extraordinarily violent storms 

 play great havoc with all kinds of vegetation and their occurrence 

 explains some of the peculiar characters of the flora of the coast of 

 Kwangtung. 



Geology. — The greater part of the surface of the coastal region 

 consists of various igneous rocks, but chiefly of a kind of granite, 

 which readUy disintegrates under the action of the atmosphere. 

 This granite is intermixed with harder and more resistant rock masses, 

 which remain as gigantic boulders all over the granite mountains as 

 the softer parts are washed away. In the interior and to a less 

 extent on the coast, limestone formations, coal measures and tertiary 

 sandstones occupy large areas. Alluvial deposits attain considerable 

 dimensions only in the deltas of the East, West and North Rivers 

 which coalesce to form the " Canton Delta " occupying approxi- 

 mately a triangle having three equal sides of about 100 miles each. 



Physical features. — Kwangtung and Kwangsi, as their names imply, 

 form the artificial eastern and western divisions of a natural area, 

 the basin of the great river of South China, the West River. The 

 mountain ranges of Kwangtung, which can be seen from the sea, are 



(21515— 6a.) Wt. 19085—411 (73). 500. 2/12. D & S. 



