66 JOURNAL OF THE ROYALj HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
a profusion of bright golden Maltese crosses with a darker eye, 
slightly pendulous, widely open, and of the most conspicuous 
charm. When well treated and not nibbled down, it can become 
a mass at least 4 feet through and about 2 feet high. 
Clematis sp. (F 343) is doubtfully distinct, and not distributed. 
Clematis sp. (F 344) is perhaps only C. montana, but a fine, large- 
flowered type from hedgerows and coppice in the Gahoba dis- 
trict. 
Clematis sp. (F 345) is closely akin, if not the same. Lotus Mountain. 
Not distributed. 
Clematis sp. (F 346) (Coll. W. Purdom), from Lotus Mountain, is 
doubtful and not distributed. 
Clematis sp. (F 347) is also not to be distributed. It is a hideous 
Vitalba thing, typical of so many sent out in recent years. Only 
under protest have I sent home even a little sample, while the 
equally numerous uglinesses near C. orientalis I have wholly 
refused to notice. 
Convolvulus tragacanthoides (F 99). — Such a very lovely little mound of 
silver-grey horns this is, starred in June with inset blossoms of 
the softest, hot, clear pink, perfectly clean and pure. It is a dense 
hedgehog, usually of about 4 inches high and 8-10 across, but 
where safe from goats occasionally doubling its dimensions and 
developing quite a woody trunk. No Levantine could be lovelier ; 
it lives on the hottest, driest slopes of the hot, dry loess hills 
about the Black water, from Naindzai and all round Siku, up 
to Lodanee [and proves a most miserable moribund miff 
accordingly]. 
Corydalis sp. (F 113). — This is one of the Chinese Corydalids 
much boomed of late years — a lush rank mass of blue adiantoid 
foliage, with tall spikes of pallid yellow flowers and a noxious 
stink. I cannot admire it ; it especially affects the slag-dump- 
like avalanches of filth that here and there descend in cataracts 
of unpleasant slimy chaos from the hills about Siku. 
Corydalis curviflora (F 37) is general all up the Border, in beck-shingles 
and alpine turf and scrub-edges. It is a weakly, gracious thing 
of annual look, about 6 inches high, with scant fine leafage, and 
flower-spires of the most dazzling pure azure, occasionally varying 
to straw-colour. Unfortunately, seed of Corydalis is often hard 
to catch on the hop, and I have not yet succeeded in getting any 
of this beauty. 
Corydalis melanochlora Bat. (= C. Purdomi) (F 254) lives only in the 
topmost screes of the great mountains, huddling close with fat and 
lovely leafage of glaucous-blue, emerging from which unfold large 
heads of very large flowers of pure white, but lipped and helmed 
with sky-blue, and with a black eye. It smells most deliciously, 
too, of Lily of the Valley, and its tuffets of sky and snow make a 
wonderful effect as they dot those gaunt aretes of the Min S'an 
in August, amid the hovering velvet butterflies of Delphinium tan- 
