52 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY s 
as it was despatched. It may occasionally happen, too, that I may 
include as distributed a plant or seed which my friends will find they 
have not yet received. This will merely mean that the tubers or the 
seed-envelopes have arrived in such a state that my manager has 
found it impossible to send out the rotted tuber, or imprudent to 
distribute seed which may have leaked out and got mixed with that 
of other plants beyond present possibility of sifting or deciphering. 
As for such cultural hints as I give, these, of course, are purely 
conjectural, and based on my local observations. The foregoing 
itinerary is meant to suggest the various climates of the districts I 
have this year explored, and the stations given for various plants 
will serve to identify each with its own conditions. Generally 
speaking, these northerly ranges should give no such legacy of tender- 
ness as is bequeathed by the warm, wet atmospheres of Yunnan and 
Szechwan that have bred us so many disappointments. The Satanee 
range has a climate close akin to our own north country conditions, 
with a very hard winter. Yet harder is the winter and damper the 
conditions in the vast grass-lands of the Min S'an Alps. Between the 
two lies the hot loess region of Siku, and it is from there alone that 
we may expect its plants to want favouring circumstances of drought, 
heat, sunshine, and a hard, stony soil. The Thundercrown Ridge, 
however, with its daily shower, stands far above the circumstances 
of the hot loess at its feet ; and its children will take the culture of 
the general high-alpine flora of the Min S'an, to which indeed they 
belong, though cut off from their kindred upon a remote and insulated 
mass of limestone. And this last word reminds me of a last caution. 
For whatever the information may be worth, both the Min S'an and 
the Satanee ranges are essentially calcareous, so that, except where 
a special caution is entered, it may be taken that all the following 
plants are calcicole in Nature. 
