326 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
country descending between two Chinese spheres of influence, to 
Si-ning and the Koko-nor on the south-west, and up the great north 
road to the east, that leads through Ping-fan away across the deserts 
into Russia. And so, if 1914 was a year of tempests and insurgencies, 
1915 indemnified us by a season of perfect peace, enlivened by the 
real joviality and friendliness of the peasants and the monks. Purdom 
was even able to take a flying visit round among the wild ranges of 
Kweite and the Koko-nor. 
The plant-list gives details of aspects and rock. Here I need only 
add that our little mule-inn of Wolvesden House already stood at 
what I figure as ten thousand feet or more, at an altitude, at least, to 
which it took the heart a week to grow accustomed ; while on the 
heights five thousand feet or so immediately overhead all motion 
became a constant difficulty with its bumblings and thumpings. Too 
high, too bleak, too cold, too lonely, these valleys gave only a dull 
coppice of poplar and willow : granite reigned everywhere, and the 
typical granitic monotony ; except for a tormented drift of dolomite, 
further up the pass, which erupted in huge fantastic teeth from the 
green alpine slopes, and immediately yielded the typical calcareous 
variety. The seasons, too, are hard and stern and swift at these 
heights. It is not till the middle of June that even the glens are 
awake, and the downs do not open their show till July is in. Then 
follows a brief and radiant summer like that of our own Alps, before 
the frosts and snow descend again in mid-September, just in time 
to catch some of the last and most glorious of the alpine flowers in 
their fullest splendour. No snow, however, lies even on the summits 
in summer, for here the snow-line is still so high that only at some 
eighteen thousand feet or more can you hope for it ; and the only 
snowfields visible in summer from the Da-Tung Alps are on certain 
wild and rugged peaks far away due north, over old Da-Tung city. 
The whole region has a gaunt, cold splendour, but its starved and 
jejune hugeness cannot compare in beauty with the yet greater huge- 
ness, sumptuous and luxuriant, of the Min S'an and Satanee Alps. 
On September 13 I rode for the last time down Wolf stone Dene 
from Wolvesden House in a sparkling morning of early frost, and 
on the morrow made my last farewell to the friendly monks in Tien 
Tang, before adventuring out on the long, sad journey over the inter- 
vening passes down into the river-valley of Ping-fan, and so back again 
into Lanchow. Thence my journey carried me steadily southward for 
three weeks, over the loess lands, into that rough country of little 
parallel wooded ranges called the Da-Ba-S'an (spelt officially, of 
course, Tapa Shan, because it is never so pronounced) which shatters 
the converging boundaries of Kansu, Shensi, and Szechwan. For 
many days one traverses these ranges, which are none of them high 
enough to give the flora I had hoped, and are not yet far enough in 
the south to yield the wealth and variety of the no-higher ranges 
along the central Yang-dz'. For me they exist only as providing a 
new record for Primula sinensis. On their far side, at Kwang-Yuen, one 
