73 
Feonomic Botany. 
Some of the plants useful to man or cultivated in Formosa have bee 
‘The edible Leguminose are the same as on the petuland- p Ebr 
garden pea (Pisum eset re te Soja bean (Soja hispida), Labla 
vulgaris, and several species of Phaseolus. The two fo lowing men 
bers of the order are HT of note :— 
Sesbania aegyptiaca, qe as “shan ch‘ing” (i.e. wild indigo), 
is a slender shrub with yellow flowers and very long slender pods. 
is planted chiefly as a help to the soil, being ploughed in when ~ 
stems are a foot or so high. Left to grow, it attains 5 or 6 feet, and is 
only useful as fuel. 
Cajanus indicus, a tall shrub, known as the * shu-dou” (tvee-bean), 
is cultivated for the seeds, which are ground into flour and used for 
mere cakes. The Sue name of this plant is “ Luang dou 
Tia folowing ci producing trees and dida but which are not 
utilized in For have been incidentally mentioned :—Jatropha 
Curcas, Aleurites cor duba; Ricinus volitans ; and to — class may 
be added the varnish tree and vegetable tallow tree. Paper might be 
made out of Broussonetia papyrifera, and also out of a species of 
d whieh is common in Formosa, but unutilized; paper 
from it is a Pakhoi export. One of the most inte eresting Formosan 
pobtuói i is bé pith of Fatsia papyrifera, commonly known to Europeans 
as the *rice paper" plant. l ean add nothing here to what is already 
n ‘ 
Ichang and Hankow. r did not see the plant wild in Hupeh 
Ssii-ch‘uan. 
rdinary or laurel camphor I leave unnoticed, as I have not been to 
the districts of production. 
culiar kind of camphor, of great value in the eyes of the Chinese, 
is distilled in Hainan from the leaves of Blumea balsamifera,a shrubby 
plant about 2 or 3 feet in spi belonging to yt sak This ma 
Mission at LE inii o d em sent me an E of the Hainan prete 
of distillation, which I ho ope to see soon in the Kew Bulletin.* «This 
plant is worthy of attention from a commercial point of view. 
'There are three chief fibre-yielding plants in cultivation :— 
1.25. eria nivea, known locally as * toà," the * ch*o ” of Pekingese, 
the nettle-hemp, yielding China grass fibre. Lately in the customs 
returns for Tainan it has been distinguished by the last name, but 
formerly it had here (and in other ports still has) only the general vae 
* he En whieh in China RM se everal different fibres, e 
* See Kew Bulletin, 1895, p. 275 (with plate). 
