REPORT OF WORK IN 191 4 IN KANSU AND TIBET. 
dulnesses, repetitions, and obscurities — to say nothing of the mis- 
cellaneous collections made by one's retainers, and ultimately un- 
decipherable. Now Chinese collecting has suffered in the past from 
an over-catholicity which flooded the grounds of the enthusiastic 
with weeds so dowdy and invasive that their luckless victims soon 
ceased to be enthusiastic at all. This indiscriminate zeal I am anxious 
to avoid ; and therefore, in the case of a plant suspected to be worth- 
less or indistinct, I prefer to pause awhile until it has justified its 
importation, before helping it claim a general welcome that it may 
not prove to deserve. With regard to things that I know to be good, 
these, whenever possible, have been at once issued ; in the cases 
where this has not been possible, they will duly be issued as soon as 
the quantity is sufficient. 
As I have said, the main mass of uncertain or indistinct plants 
results from late autumn collecting, when no adequate diagnosis can 
be made. The bulk of numbers after F 280 are of this nature ; and as 
I cannot guarantee their bearers I cannot, obviously, describe them 
fully. I recommend, moreover, that even such names as I can give 
should be accepted as makeshifts, not as final certainties. Without 
a whole library to assist examination, it is not always possible to be 
scientifically certain that even apparent Kerria japonica or Meconopsis 
quintuplinervia may not be in reality different species, however over- 
whelming the probability that they are not. Where I believe a name 
to be sound, I shall duly give it, but without dogmatic insistence 
on its validity. Generics, as a rule, are pretty safe, when given ; 
specifics I only venture on with the above caution, and where I give 
names of my own to certain finds (e.g. in Iris and Primula) such names, 
I need hardly say, imply no sort of claim for specific rank in their 
bearers, but are merely labels of convenience applied to certain 
specialities so charming that I should feel it frigid to think of them 
only as numbers. Professor Balfour* meanwhile will, I hope ere 
this, have received specimens of all my last finds, and to him may 
safely be left the task of unravelling their uncertainties, and separating 
the white sheep of new species from the goats of old ones already 
collected by Potanin. I give here no diagnosis of even such treasures 
as I believe to be genuine novelties ; the aim of these notes is merely 
to offer my friends, now that the season is done, a convenient and 
compendious running account of what they may expect from its 
results, with cultural suggestions, and such other hints as may occur. 
Much already has been said on all these matters, in occasional articles 
in the Gardeners' Chronicle ; I hope a certain amount of inevitable 
repetition may be found pardonable, in view of the great advantage 
that a connected account must always have over disjointed fragments 
of journalism, or occasional MS. notes accompanying each lot of seeds 
* Since this paragraph was written (in January 191 5) Professor Balfour, 
with his usual untiring kindness, has completely revised the list of names and 
species, which now, therefore, has the authority and value that it necessarily 
lacked when I wrote. 
E 2 
