Beyond that, progress has to be made by the use of Chinese paths. 

 There are no roads, even between the largest cities. Chinese guides 

 can conduct the traveller from town to town, but the paths are not 

 commodious for the carriage of heavy baggage, being at intervals 

 only a few inches wide and consisting of narrow stone steps on the 

 mountain sides. It thus happens that though many able and enter- 

 prising botanists have resided in the province, none of them have 

 been able to make any considerable collections beyond the neighbour- 

 hood of the water ways. 



History of Botanical Exploration. — Meagre as is our knowledge of 

 the flora of this province, it is probably more complete than is the 

 case with any other part of China. To this result have contributed 

 the unusual length of the sea coast, the navigability of several of 

 the rivers, the long residence of Europeans at four of the principal 

 centres and the fact that a well-equipped botanical station has been 

 maintained by the British Government for many years at Hongkong, 

 nearly in the centre of the coast line. 



A concise account of the history of exploration up to nearly the 

 end of last century may be found in Bretschneider's classical History 

 of Botanical Discoveries in China. The collectors during that 

 period, whose work has most abundantly contributed to our know- 

 ledge oF the flora, are Hance, Ford, Sampson, Vachell, Krone and 

 B. C. Henry. During the present century the work begun by Ford 

 in founding the Herbarium* of the Botanical and Forestry Depart- 

 ment in Hongkong has been energetically continued by the ofl&cers 

 of that Department,! and several special expeditions have been 

 organised and despajtched by the Colonial Government under their 

 care for the exploration of the less known parts of the province. 

 Expeditions to Sanning, Hoifung and to the Swatow hinterland 

 may specially be mentioned as filKng up gaps in our knowledge, 

 while the more thorough exploration of the colonial flora has given 

 us a fairly accurate idea of the vegetation of a few hundred square 

 miles of the district. 



Much still remains to be done. A map has been prepared and will 

 be found at the beginning of the book indicating the ground already 

 more or less botanicaUy explored ; all the rest is practically un- 

 touched. Thus the whole of the area from south-west to west of 

 Macao, representing roughly the westernmost third of the province, 

 remains quite unexplored botanicaUy save for a few small areas on 

 the coast. It is probable that the vegetation of this portion con- 

 tains a considerable number of species in common with the more 

 completely tropical French possessions to the southward which are 

 as yet absent from our records for the province. 



The flora again of the region from north to east of Canton which 

 represents another third of Kwangtung is totally unknown, except 

 from a few collections made on mountains on its southern borders and 

 along some of the small rivers near Canton. The northern portion 

 probably contains the highest ground in the province and may 

 confidently be expected to yield numerous new and interesting 

 discoveries to the botanists who first have the time, means and 

 enterprise at their disposal for its exploration. 



* See Dunn's The Hongkong Herbarium in Kew Bull., 1910, 188. 

 t See the departmental Annual Reports for the period. 



