338 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
to. I have already animadverted on the general ugliness of the 
Da-Tung shrubberies ; and in these Lonicera and Ribes played too 
dishonourable a part. The only floral hope of this year lies in F 788, 
a very remarkable little prostrate Honeysuckle, and almost the only 
thing not collected in flower that I mean here to make mention of. 
This was seen but once, at a turn of the track, floundering over rocks 
up in the Red Basin of Szechwan, where in November it immediately 
attracted attention with its frail flopping sprays of lucent dark-green 
foliage, each one of which was crowned with rich terminal heads of 
bloomy blue-black berries of rare attractiveness. 
Meconopsis. — From the tragedy of having no new Poppies to record 
this year I hurry to those I did see, leaving to its fortunate possessors 
among my diligent readers the promises not obscurely held forth by 
F 735, that unclaimed splendour of the Prattii group, whose fuller 
history awaits the moment of its proclamation as species nova. 
M. integrifolia, as usual, abounds in the alpine scrub at about 10,000 
-12,000 feet. But, though very magnificent and universal, I cannot 
say it is as abundant in the Da-Tung as in the southerly ranges. You 
may always count on seeing it. You will not always see a huge show 
of it. However, it is very notable ; on one occasion, ahead of me 
up in the scant low scrub, it was one day so splendid from afar that 
I took it for baby donkeys. In the Da-Tung it has a tendency 
towards a form, much more refined than the type, with only one 
flower, or few at the most. This year, however, I concluded not 
to bother my friends with any more seed of it. (Painting and 
photograph.) 
M. Prattii, renumbered as F' 706, in case of regional differences, 
is the one and only Prickly Poppy of the Da-Tung Alps. After long 
search I utterly disbelieve that original record of M. racemosa from 
the neighbourhood of Chebson Abbey, which in itself is so far out 
from the foothills of the alps that no blue Poppy could possibly be 
found there at all ; while my utmost search among the classical speci- 
mens of Przewalsky in the Petrograd herbarium showed me no 
grounds for thinking that anybody really had ever claimed to find 
a blue Poppy near Chebson. The authentic specimens of M. racemosa 
all hailed from the next range, that of the Kweite-Koko-nor Alps ; 
while in the Da-Tung the one Prickly Poppy — leaving F 735 aside for 
the moment (and it is certainly not M. racemosa) — is universally the 
creamy-anthered M. Prattii. This, in these ranges, is not so stiffly 
saxatile as in the Min S'an, and luxuriates also out in the opener, 
stonier places of the grass-alps, in a way quite foreign to the southerly 
ranges. On Wolvesden Pass I saw an ugly albino, subsequently 
eaten by yaks ; and, on a high cliff, three lovely specimens of a rose- 
pink variation ; otherwise the type did not vary, unless in the form 
of the seedling leaves, sometimes, in their first year of development, 
of a quite astonishing rotundity and fatness of outline. Personally 
I thought the M. Prattii of the Min S'an lovelier than the laxer, more 
ephemeral-looking form of the Da-Tung ; but this may merely be my 
sentiment for the former region ; in any case it is odd that between 
