REPORT OF WORK IN 1915 IN KANSU AND TIBET. 337 
sporadically throughout the summer. Poor, hot, dry soil should best 
qualify it to maintain these laudable habits with us, in which case 
it should prove a very useful acquisition. A more conducive carpet 
for Crocus could hardly be conceived. 
Leontopodium sp. F 740 is an absolutely distinct plant, very abun- 
dant throughout the lower warmer stretches of the alpine region, on 
hot banks, river-shingles, and so forth, ascending on to the high moor- 
land passes between Tien Tang and Ping-fan. From the perennial 
woody stock there springs each year a sheaf of straight, undivided, 
elegant stems, set with grey-white foliage, very narrow, and in effect 
like slender shoots of rosemary, unfolding at the top each one single 
Edelweiss of great size, almost as brilliant in silver as the foliage, and 
with narrow pointed rays in unwonted profusion. This, of itself, 
would be sufficient beauty ; but every portion of the shoot, when 
rubbed, exhales in intensity exactly the lemon-scent of Aloysia or 
Eucalyptus citriodora. Poor pebbly treatment will certainly keep 
this in strictest elegance of habit. 
Ligustrina amurensis will not be yet to be distributed, I think. 
This is the giant privet or white lilac that has such sacred associa- 
tions all up the March that no monastery lacks its specimen. Apart 
from the stately arborescent habit and the huge panicles of creamy- 
white and the unfading, undarkening clear green of its tall pyramidal 
masses of foliage, Ligustrina also has the beautiful ruddy peeling 
trunk of a cherry. There should be no more doubt about Ligustrina' s 
hardiness in England than about its beauty. One wonders, though, 
never to see it. The famous Holy Tree at Gumbum Abbey is a specimen 
of this, hallowed through ages by a variation, on either side the midrib 
of each leaf, which figures a character from the Scriptures, rather in 
the form of the Greek Eta. These leaves are in such high value as 
relics, and so widely diffused, that the Blessed Sign is sometimes 
believed to be only visible to the eye of faith : thus to account for the 
number of leaves extant that do not show it to profaner vision. 
Lloydia sp. F 527 is certainly the same as F 93 of last year, and 
now stands certified as Lloydia alpina var. It is the more ravishing 
a little rock-fairy the more one sees of it ; and in the Da-Tung range 
is very much more abundant and in finer character than in those of 
the Min S'an and Satanee. It is always, however, incurably saxatile 
(except at one point in the ghyll above Tien Tang) , and should prove 
the especial beauty of cool limestone cliffs \ not showy, indeed, but 
of ineffable refinement and charm, spoken for by both painting and 
photographs, made in the rocks above Tien Tang, with monks and 
acolytes standing round in a ring with their purple skirts extended, 
so as to keep off the wind, and for a moment arrest the dance of those 
delicate fairy bells. It has my most special regard, and the true 
Lloydia tibetica, for which I long took it, proves a very poor stolid 
affair of the upland lawns, gawky and small-flowered, and never 
venturing into the rocks which are the only refuge of Lloydia alpina. 
Lonicera sp. — None of those sent this year must be looked forward 
VOL. XLII. z 
