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don’t know how to begin to work, as compared with a European. 
And as to their ever seriously fighting or competing in the arts 
of peace or war with the Anglo-Celtic race, it is an idle dream.” 
“July 19, 1897.—I would suggest, so great is the variety and 
beauty of the Chinese flora, and so fit are the plants for the 
European climate, that an effort ought to be made to send out a 
small expedition, the funds, e.g., being provided by a syndicate of, 
say, a horticulturist, a private gentleman or two, &c. I estimate 
ages would cover the expenses for two years; and what I 
uld recommend is that a man be selected who has just finished 
his botanica studies 4t Cambridge. I mean, don't send a collector, 
but a gentleman, a student and an enthusiast. 'The locality I 
would suggest is the mountain range separating Szechwan from 
Shensi, or thereabouts, eset we pene starting from Ichang in 
April and covering two 8 
“A person like me, Vit daily official work, can do little or 
nothing. We live in towns, in the midst of cultivation, and the 
distances to get to the hunting grounds are enorm and when 
we do get there we are half worn out. "There is aen. onec qu 
uncanny in the way in which herbaceous Laude disappear out of 
view after they have had their gaudy season of flowering, and 
when the plant is found the seeds are mbi or the capsules are 
empty. Such are some of the difficulties. 
* My own plant collecting, since I have been here, is enormous, 
but at such an expenditure of muscular force! It would be 
strictly paralleled by that of a bank-clerk in London who made 
excursions on Sundays all over England, and two or three times 
a year made hurried trips to the Carpathians and the Pyrenees. 
The bank-clerk would really in such a way expend less energy. 
*I have been reading your account of the Cy clamen, which 
I find very interesting. In a place like this, where one is over- 
whelmed with the multitudes of species of plants, one is 
I 
this province, and hinted at its possible wore aede but iL. dont 
think now there has been the slightest glaciation here, ge clay is 
simply a wash-out of the universal limestone, and what one finds 
here is a country which has not been distorted. FAR Merl re for an 
immense period. The country is cut up into innumerable valleys 
and petty plains and isolated peaks; and isolation seems to be 
the factor which has kept up so many different forms of life, once 
they were started. 
* Another interesting series of questions is to find out what are 
the uses of the pupipeed adaptations one sees, e.g., what is the 
use of the fur like the tail of a cat on the fruit (an enormous 
fruit) of Dolichandrone Cauda-felina, a i hall tree which occurs 
in the Red River valley. In this hot steaming valley there are 
many extraor inary fruits; now-a-days there are scarcely any 
large animals, cept tigers and leopards. But there are 
multitudes of i e "eie ferocious ants reges destroy the foliage 
of many trees for nest-building purpose 
* [ assume that everything of this kind has a meaning, a use, 
one could find it out, and people forget the part which vieles 
