104 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Pyrus sp. (F 399) has not been distributed. It is a big, uninterest- 
ing-looking tree, from which a few of the rare little hard single 
fruits were tugged with difficulty one day, as I passed a small 
grave-copse some three to four miles north of Tan Ch'ang. 
Pyrus sp. (F 400) (the White Mountain Ash) is perhaps the best of the 
lot as far as foliage goes, except for F 338. For this is simply 
a replica of P. Aucuparia, exactly like the Mountain Ash in 
leafage and habit, but that it is rather denser and more compactly 
erect in growth. The foliage, however, takes the most gorgeous 
tones of salmon-orange- vermilion in autumn, and the scanty 
fruit-panicles are of waxy white, containing rose-pink seeds. It 
abounds all up the alpine coppice and lower woodland, from 
Satanee to J6-ni. 
Quercus sp. (F 466) is a peculiarly graceful little light tree, suggestive 
of a Willow in habit, no less than in its very narrow dentate 
leaves, amid which sit buzzly-cupped acorns. It was only once 
seen, in a temple coppice high up on the hot loess downs above 
Siku (F 467). I believe it to be just the ordinary Oak; and 
it is not certain whether either set of acorns will prove sound 
enough to be distributed. 
Rhododendron.' — The alps of the Kansu-Tibet border, cool and high, 
have nothing like the luxuriance and variety to which Rhodo- 
dendron attains on the steamy, warmer, wetter ranges of the 
provinces going down towards India. I am indeed surprised at 
the scant variety we have noticed, and must only remark that, 
with one exception, all these appear even passionately calcareous 
in their tastes. 
Rhododendron (F 63) (? br achy car pum) is the one exception. It lives on 
reddish shaly subsoil in the steep copsy folds of the great ridge high 
above Satanee, at 9,000-10,000 feet. It is a singularly beautiful 
shrub — a compact pyramid of 8-10 feet, or a small round-headed 
tree of 15-18 feet — but always neat and brilliant, and well 
furnished with lucent bright-green foliage, otherwise after the 
pattern of R. fulgens. The flowers are borne in loose clusters in 
early May, and in the most ravishing profusion ; and that this 
was not the accident of one particular season was shown in late 
autumn, when every shoot was seen graced again with a fat bud, 
preparing no less glorious a show than when Purdom had first 
sighted it in the spring, when every bush was a mass of bloom. 
These blooms, too, are of the loveliest — four to six large trumpets 
of palest pearly pink with a rosier blush outside, suggesting in 
shape and size and texture a compromise between those of R. 
Aucklandii and R. ciliatum, and carried laxly in away to reveal 
the full loveliness of each, if not to satisfy the exhibitor's 
passion for a tight, hard pyramid of blossom. 
Rhododendron sp. (F 88) can probably not be distributed. It is not a 
very common plant, and has much the look of R. anthopogon, but 
that it flops and flounders along the mossy banks and limestone 
