736 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Students will find it very useful, as it gives a truer idea of the 

 probable course of evolution of plant genera than does the ordinary 

 arrangement. 



" A Naturalist in Western China, with Vasculum, Camera, and 

 Gun." By Ernest Henry Wilson, V.M.H., with an introduction by 

 Charles Sprague Sargent, LL.D. Two vols., with 101 full-page illustra- 

 tions and a map. (London : Methuen & Co., Ltd. 1913.) Price 

 30s. net. 



Mr. Wilson is well known to readers of this Journal as one of the 

 select few who have been awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour by 

 the R.H.S. His introductions from China are also familiar to all who 

 cultivate hardy plants or who frequent horticultural exhibitions. 



Mr. Wilson's travels in China commenced early in the year 1899, 

 and comprise four distinct expeditions extending over a period of 

 eleven years. The first two journeys were on behalf of Messrs. Veitch, 

 the others in the interests of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard 

 University. An account of these journeys, with observations on the 

 country, the people, the plants, birds, and animals met with, furnishes 

 material for two volumes of most interesting reading. 



The country explored by Mr. Wilson and described in his book 

 embraces Western Hupeh, Szechuan, and various non-Chinese States 

 on the Chino-Tibetan borderland. This region lies within the 

 Yangtsze river basin, west of the famous Ichang gorges, which are 

 situated about 1000 miles from the mouth of the Yangtsze river. 

 The first volume opens with a description of the wonderful mountain 

 ranges of Western China and of the complicated river-system to 

 which they give rise. With the exception of the Chengtu Plain there 

 is an entire absence of plain or plateau or anything in the nature of 

 level country. In Western Hupeh, in the neighbourhood of Ichang 

 (Mr. Wilson's starting-point for the west), the country is particularly 

 wild and savage, and, being sparsely populated, presents to the explorer 

 an exceedingly arduous task. It has, however, an extremely rich 

 flora, due to the fact that the native vegetation has to a great extent 

 been left unmolested. It was in this region that Mr. Wilson met with 

 the beautiful lilies Lilium Henryi, L. Brownii, and the varieties 

 chloraster and leucanthemum. 



Extending west from the Hupeh boundary to the valley of the 

 Min River is the " Red Basin of Szechuan," so called from the red 

 clayey sandstone of which the soil and rocks are composed. At 

 some remote period this area was, in all probability, a vast inland 

 lake, and, as Mr. Wilson points out, the differences between the floras 

 on its eastern and western border-ranges lend colour to the theory 

 that a boundary, such as a large lake would be, previously existed. 

 At the present time the " Red Basin," drained by the Yangtsze and its 

 tributaries, is a network of rolling flat-topped mountains, and a rich 

 and fertile agricultural region of terraced fields. Still further to the 

 west is the Chengtu Plain, the " Garden of Western China," where 



