FROM AX OLD STAXDPOIXT. 



197 



that I should send you, in writing, the remarks I made after the 

 reading of Mr. Ouppy's paper on Ph\nt-Distribution, I can only 

 repeat my answer that they are not worth it, except, perhaps, as 

 relating to the Chairman's opinion that the author had not giveu' 

 sufficient importance to human agency as one of the means employed 

 in the distribution of plants. 



Many years ago I was for some time at Landawur, in the 

 Himalayas, where there is a militar}' sanatorium about 7,000 feet 

 above sea-level. The steep sides of the mountain were wooded,, 

 principally with evergreen oak, the branches of which were thickly 

 fringed with ferns ; there were also rhododendrons growing as high 

 as elms, with dark red flowers. Here and there, on the lower slopes,, 

 were small pine woods of M'onderful beauty, and, I may also add, 

 full of leeches, with which one's feet became covered when cHmbing 

 up or down the steep khud (precipice) on which they grew. There 

 were single dahlias growing wild on the mountain side in the places 

 where there were no trees, forming patches of brilliant colour — 

 scarlet, sulphur, and white. It was supposed that they were 

 indigenous to the soil, and people wondered at this, as the extremes 

 of climate in the Himalayas and the want of moisture for many 

 months would be against the growth of such a plant. But our 

 innocent speculations were one day ruthlessly overturned by someone 

 saying, that in a little graveyard on the side of the hill above us,, 

 one of the graves had, some time ago, been planted with dahlias 

 and that they had spread freely, partly from seed and partly from 

 the clearing out of rubbish and superfluous clay, probably containing 

 fragments of dahlia roots which were thrown down the hillside from 

 the graveyard. In this case human agency would account for the 

 appearance of this flower, but it would be interesting to learn if it 

 still exists in the same latitude, or if it has gradually died out, as it 

 might well have done after the lapse of years since I saw it there 

 in 1872. 



Colonel T. H. Hexdley, CLE. (Chairman). — Is enough stress 

 laid upon the importance of human agency in the distribution of 

 plants or in the changes in climate which affect it 1 For example 

 is not the dessication of large tracts of country due, in some cases,, 

 to neglect to maintain canals and other irrigation work, as has been 

 the case in Mesopotamia ; or to somewhat similar causes, as in the 

 Western parts of the Punjab and Eajputana ; or in others to 



