330 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Anemone sp. (F 577) is a very abundant weed, low and high, through- 
out all the alps and their foothills. Usually it is rather ugly, with wide- 
sprayed heads of small white stars radiating above mounds of foliage ; 
but the seed I got was from much better forms round Wolvesden House, 
where the many-sepalled white flowers were in much less disproportion 
to the amplitude of the foliage. Often all the blossoms turn foliaceous 
and become like little green roses : a development which, if it occurs 
with us, will be hailed with cries of rapture at Myddelton House. 
Antennaria sp. (F 576) should be merely a very specially fine form 
of A. margaritacea, collected from the river shingles of the Da-Tung 
above Tien Tang. But I fear there may have been a confusion of 
number between this and F 741. 
Aquilegia ecalcarata (F 588) gives universal joy, at home as in the 
alps, with its dance of delicate little claret-coloured flowers with 
their whirling skirts. Once I found a white-petticoated form of 
special attraction ; it died on the way across Siberia, though I nursed 
it with the utmost care. But it might easily turn up again from 
seed. 
A. viridifiora (F 557) lives on the hottest rocks and river-shingles 
of the region, at the lowest elevations. Clearly it wants a hot, dry 
place, or crevice of sun-baked cliffs or steps. Its milk-dashed foliage 
and its strange combinations of chocolate, green, and dull gold have 
a rare charm, to say nothing of its soft fragrance, which pervades 
rather than is noticeably exhaled. (Painting.) 
Aster Farreri (F 582) is of course the same as last year's F 174. 
It abounds in the cooler hollows of long grass low down in Wolfstone 
Dene, and far away to the Koko-nor, in form more brilliant (as seems 
to me) than its first season's efforts in the Min S'an. (Photograph.) 
Aster sp. (F 581) is the contribution made by the Da-Tung to that 
solitary-flowered group of alpine asters represented by A. alpinus 
and A. andinus. It is a very pretty little thing, but rather pallid, 
forming a sheet of soft colour over the high alps in July, beneath 
the fluttering lavender butterflies of the Harebell Poppy. It will 
appreciate the cultivation that suits A. alpinus and A. limitaneus. 
Caragana sp. (?) F 513. Specially cruel is the weakness of the 
high and scrubby valleys of the Da-Tung in the matter of shrubs. Too 
northerly, too cold, too bleak, too arid, they have nothing like the 
multifarious luxuriance of those glorious valleys in the shadow of the 
Min S'an and the Satanee Alps. This Caragana is one of their best 
productions, alone of its race in loving cool damp exposures and 
coppice at alpine and high alpine elevations only, where it forms a 
flat-boughed bush, dense with long thorns, and set close with big 
blossoms of soft clear pink in lovely contrast to the vivid green of 
its handsome many-folioled leafage in July. It is abundant on the 
northern folds of the Da-Tung, the highest-ascending of all shrubs 
there, except Potentilla fruticosa ; and I also saw it, beyond a doubt, 
on the high crests of the Min S'an in 1914, though innocent of seed 
there. 
