TIMBER RAFTS. 
191 
quantities of it, subjected to the heat of a common stove. Towards 
evening we occasionally passed rocks in an undecomposed state, 
that exhibited the same colour as the beds of clay. Their strata 
were sometimes inclined, and had beds of fine gravel interposed 
between them. 
On anchoring in the evening, I examined some rocks similar to 
those by which we had passed, and found that they changed their 
red colour beneath the surface, and became of a bluish gray. When 
disintegrated, they formed the clay soil before mentioned. 
These rocks, which near the surface might be said to be com- 
posed of argillaceous sand-stone of a coarse grain, passed lower down 
into pudding stone, containing rounded fragments of quartz and de- 
composed crystals of felspar. 
On the 24th the country improved in appearance ; the rocks 
which had the day before been uniformly bare, were now clothed 
with groves of pine. Large rafts of its timber were floating down 
the stream. In a memorandum attached to a drawing of the 
Finns lanceolata at the India House, it is stated that the rafts of 
timber floated down to Canton are formed of this tree. This, I 
apprehend, is an error. We never found the Pinus lanceolata in 
groves, but scattered amongst the Pinus Massoniana; and, as I have 
before mentioned, generally of a small size. The rafts which we saw 
both on the northern and southern side of Mei-ling were certainly 
formed chiefly of the former plant. I use the qualification chiefly, 
because I am not quite certain that another pine, allied to the Pinus 
paludosus , does not sometimes occur in the groves. The botanic 
gardener thought so, but did not satisfy me of the fact by any speci- 
mens. All the groves I saw in China were of the Pinus Masso- 
