NOTES AND ABSTRACTS. 



717 



botanical collector and interpreter, starting from Buchara through plains 

 of little interest. Save near rivers where irrigation can be used, the 

 country is in summer a veritable desert and few shrubs are to be seen, 

 Holostachys caspica and Holoxylon Ammodendron are among the few 

 which grow in the sandy loam soil. Where the soil can be irrigated the 

 land is carefully cultivated, and almost everything in fruit or vegetables 

 is grown, als) Cotton, Rice, Maize, and splendid Grapes, and a great deal 

 of fruit, including Grapes, is dried and exported. The inhabitants are 

 hard-working and shrewd people, and fruit, vegetables, and other produce 

 is very cheap. The city of Buchara, surrounded by these highly-cultivated 

 gardens and fields, is a most interesting town, and during the early spring 

 Tulips, Iris reticulata, and other bulbous plants are seen everywhere in a 

 wild state. The non-irrigated steppe is after May a perfect burned-up 

 plain, not even weeds remaining alive. Samarkand, another bright spot, 

 is famous for its fine quality of Walnuts, which are exported. Almost 

 every inch of land is cultivated and kept painfully clean and free from 

 weeds. The inhabitants (the Sarden) are a most industrious people, who 

 improve at present large tracts of land by irrigation (cutting canals &c). 

 Peaches, Apricots, and Pistacia vera are extensively grown for export, and 

 are sold when dry to dealers at the extraordinary low price of 1 rubel 

 50 to 60 kopeker (about 3s. to 3s. M. per pud, equal to kilo 16*381). 

 Locusts are very often a terrible plague, destroying crop after crop in the 

 early part of the year. Taschkent and Samarkand are trade centres, and 

 the newer parts of the towns have wide regular streets, lined with canals 

 and rows of trees such as Ulmus pumila and Populus alba. Travelling, 

 however, is very expensive, posting, e.g., costing from Taschkent to 

 Przewalsk, only a distance of 190 kilometres, for one person 160 rubel, 

 about £16, and the country, excepting for an attractive spot here and 

 there, is very uninteresting. After May the plains, except where irrigated, 

 are bare of vegetation, and the hills are not much better. Tschimkent is 

 a small town having a factory where quinine is extracted from a plant 

 called " Termene." 



The author describes the vegetation on the Tschu river as more 

 interesting ; there is more vegetation, although the heights are nearly 

 everywhere robbed of their forests. In one part he found such a number 

 of Eremurus himalaicus (probably E. turkestanicus) in seed that it would 

 have amounted to tons of seed if it had been collected. Ephedra intermedia 

 and Incarvillea Olgce also grow in large masses. In some of the small 

 towns the author noticed among cultivated plants the early Cactus Dahlias, 

 such as Giant Cactus, picta, &c, carefully tended in the small gardens of 

 the peasantry. After many adventures the travellers reached the Khan- 

 tengri (or at least the foot of the mountain), which has never been 

 ascended. After trying in vain to ascend this mighty giant and waiting 

 for ten days, the whole expedition had to return via the Kaiuntii valley to 

 Saritscha. The slopes are covered everywhere with species of Primula 

 resembling P. cashmeriana, Saxifraga, Papaver, Leontopodium, and 

 lower down with Berberis, Oxytropis, Bhododendron. Bad weather set in 

 at the end of August and reluctantly they returned to Narikol, from whence 

 another attempt on the mountain was made with fresh provisions and new 

 horses. From Narikol they travelled via the Muzart Pass into China and 



