656 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



WANDERINGS IN CHINA. 

 By E. H. Wilson. 

 [Paper read before the Horticultural Club.] 



It has been niy good fortune, through the enterprise of Messrs. James 

 Veitch & Sons, to spend some five years in China in quest of new plants 

 for our gardens. My travels led me through Southern, Central, and Western 

 China, and enabled me to see a good deal of one of the oldest and most 

 interesting nations in the world. My journey in the South of China was 

 principally to make the acquaintance of Dr. Henry. I have been most for- 

 tunate in many ways, but in none more so than in meeting this gentleman, 

 and thus being able to profit by his sage counsel at the very commencement 

 of my peregrinations. China, like India in particular, has its own peculiar 

 civilisation, and the life of a European out there is very different from what 

 it is in his own land. The sooner a new arrival realises this and adapts 

 himself to circumstances the better for him. 



Before I commence to say anything about the flora, I should like to 

 say a few words about the Chinese. That they wear pigtails, use chopsticks 

 in lieu of knives and forks, eat rice, bird-nests and other horrible messes, 

 smoke opium, murder missionaries now and again ; that the women bind 

 their feet ; that they are opposed to change, preferring their own form of 

 civilisation to ours, and that every European Power is anxious to acquire a 

 slice of their country, is a rough summary of what is generally known 

 about the Chinese. European newspapers are always happy in showing 

 them in their worst light, and usually succeed in so doing. Travellers 

 have been everywhere, and the literature on China is voluminous. Yet 

 China remains to-day one of the least known countries in the world, and 

 her people one of the least understood. And why is this ? The answer is 

 not far to seek. Most of the books on China have been written by people 

 \<ho have only spent a few months in the country and obtained most of 

 i heir information in the treaty ports, or through interpreters. Even those 

 who have travelled much in the country are usually not content to state 

 plain facts as they find them, and the result is that, with rare exceptions, 

 books on China are grossly inaccurate. 



It is not my object, neither is this the time or place, to defend the 

 Chinese ; but in common justice I must say they are much maligned. Save 

 in moments of popular excitement, they are a peace-loving, law-abiding, 

 and highly industrious people, and their commercial integrity is of the 

 highest. I have been on the heels of riots, have passed through troublous 

 districts where missionaries have been barbarously murdered only a few 

 weeks before, and was through the Boxer trouble in 1900, yet I was never 

 once assaulted. Further, I have never had even a piece of mud thrown at me 

 deliberately, or been called " foreign devil " save by some irresponsible urchin. 

 These facts speak for themselves. Could a Chinaman travel through one 

 of our big cities, or even through our country villages, and fare as well ? 



