184 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Discussion. 



Mr. Elwes : To me this has been by far the most interesting 

 lecture I have heard in this room, and I think the members will agree 

 with me that it has been one of the best illustrated. We have to 

 thank Professor Balfour for having brought before us such an immense 

 number of new and interesting plants. There were one or two plants 

 which interested me specially, because forty years ago, when working 

 out the distribution of Asiatic birds, I made the same remark as he 

 has made to-day, and it has been confirmed by other explorers, that 

 is, the extraordinarily near relationship between the Alpine birds of 

 China — and it applies also to plants — and those of the Himalayas. 

 By Alpine I mean the high level. It is remarkable how even in 

 Formosa you find that the birds and plants are precisely the same 

 as those that are perfectly familiar in the Himalayas ; and I venture 

 to think that if anyone undertakes the monographing of these Chinese 

 plants they will have to include the Himalayan, because they cannot 

 work on one without the other. I should like to hear Professor 

 Balfour's opinion as to this. He has also spoken about the question 

 of cultivation, and he gave us the very interesting information that he 

 is about to put up an Alpine House at Edinburgh. That will un- 

 doubtedly give him opportunities of growing many plants which, if 

 we succeeded in keeping them alive for a year or two in the past> 

 we thought we were doing wonders with. I should also like to ask him 

 if it might not be possible by some means to get rid of the over- 

 whelming difficulty we in the South had to contend with of alternate 

 cold and heat. Would it not be possible to use a refrigerator ? because 

 after having been in the Alps, the high mountains of America, the Hima- 

 layas and other mountains, I feel that the main difficulty we have to 

 deal with is the activity of plants in the winter. We cannot keep them 

 at rest in the winter. In their own country they were for three, four, 

 or five months above the snow, and for the rest of the year they were 

 under the snow ; and when we see what extraordinary results have been 

 obtained by treating plants and bulbs by cold, I do not see why some- 

 thing should not be attempted in the cultivation of high Alpine plants 

 in the same way. Then Professor Balfour suggested that watering 

 from below was the best means of dealing with the liability to damp 

 off. Of course, unless one can get information as to the locality the 

 plants come off, we can only follow the usual gardener's rule-of-thumb 

 method. I can speak from personal experience when I say that many 

 of these high Himalayan plants, and those in West or North- West 

 Yunnan, are growing in mist or in a bath of rain. The explanation 

 given about that region leads me to suppose that the climates of the 

 high Alps of Western China are very similar, but there are deep river 

 valleys which are exceedingly arid. I make these remarks with a 

 view of asking Professor Balfour whether he has found in cultivation 

 —in which he has been more successful than anyone else — that the 



