295 
florist’s flowers. It does seem a pity to spoil the simply beautiful 
flowers by converting them into monstrosities with crested 
appendages, &c., &c. Of course, as scientific experiments the 
cresting, doubling, &c., are all right and ne and your 
account of the Cyclamen I read with much interest. 
The woods near Szemao are full of birds, and the notes are 
exquisite, ine to be heard in perfection in these days of showery 
weather. the rainy season has begun. en the sun gets out 
the sean or such a racket that one can hear nothing else. I 
have not told you of the jungle-fowl; this ved : believe, Gallus 
bankiva, the original form of the fa rmyard fo l. They are very 
common in the forests and woods here, and a simply gorgeous. 
They are glorified bantams, the colours having a brilliancy that 
seems abated in the domesticated kind. They crow and cackle 
and behave in the woods just as a farmyard fowl dd do, pum 
they are a little shyer of man. Occasionally one sees a flying- 
a 
I saw the other day what I thought was a calf; it turned out to 
be a red-coloured deer, which speedily bolted with an up-turned 
tail, white beneath like a rabbit’s. It is very hard to believe that 
this pue UAE Rem which only occurs, so far as I know, one or 
chi when they are 
* young " condition, velvety at the bases, are worth to Chinese 
deleri as much as $50 a pair. Elephants, wild cattle of 
e kind, wild boars ‘ae: &c., all occur in the same large 
ruli lying to the 
I am afraid ikae l be no chance here = getting hardy 
bamboos. Bamboos of that charaeter do occur in the higher 
ranges of Yunnan, but who is to go there at the time when they 
are in seed, once every 60 years, the Chinese say. 
I am sorry about the non-success of the lily bulbs; but you 
have received seeds of the species. I am afraid there will be little 
here of a hardy nature, but there grin! a few things of which I shall 
try to send seeds later. Is it worth while sending seeds of 
orchids? Yesterday I came acr ca a very peculiar " terrestrial 
orchid, with tiny flowers (3 in.) like beetles. I also found in the 
dd and very long (3 in.) cylindric-tubed, rotate- deem. white 
pretty in eultivation. "These I found on a bit of cliff which I 
stumbled against for the first time. "There are also two litile 
palms here, which I hope to get in fruit later on. Has Burmannia 
been in gere ee any species, with you? There is a species 
here and at Mengtze, occurring in wet grassy places at hig 
elevations, d the flowers, deep blue, while not very large are 
very curious, and a nu f massed together would be 
bodie: Shape 
In many p the Mengize and Szemao trees and shrubs the 
flowers occur on the branches below the leaves, and not on the 
peripheral surface of the tree, as in ordinary cases. Many lianas 
