3io A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
Dr. W. Hotting Hemsley, who has worked at the classification 
of this vast collection, writing in 1901, stated that many of the 
new varieties and species were finer than any already in cultiva¬ 
tion, and the new genera include many of great worth. 
When the twentieth century dawned, hardly any of these 
had, as a sixteenth-century writer would have said, “ become 
denizens of our English gardens." No wonder that nursery¬ 
men thirsted for a share of the spoils. The intrepid spirit of 
former adventurers has not ceased to stir British gardeners to 
make strenuous efforts in the cause of science, and collectors in 
many climes still have difficulties to encounter, in spite of the 
comforts of civilization, which rapid communication has 
brought to the utmost parts of the earth. No sooner had 
Messrs. Veitch decided to send a collector to obtain a supply 
of the best of the plants newly discovered in China, especially 
of Davidia involucrata and M econo ft sis integrifolia, than Mr. 
E. H. Wilson, who was well suited to the purpose, was found 
ready to undertake the commission. He arrived in Hong Kong 
in June, 1899, and during his first trip to consult with Dr. 
Henry, then in Sczemao, in Yunnan, he found the new Jasmi- 
num ftrimulinum, and started on a longer journey in February, 
1900, making Ichang, on the Yangtze, his headquarters. Un¬ 
dismayed by the Boxer riots, he remained at his post, and found 
numberless new plants, such as Astilbe Davidii and Clematis 
montana rubens, in the neighbouring mountain ranges. Again 
he returned to China, and in January, 1903, started once more 
up the Yangtze, and penetrated to the snowy peaks of Tibet. 
The account of the journey is full of interest from a botanical 
point of view, and is as replete with hardships as the most 
adventurous could desire. 1 First, the rapids of the Yangtze, 
a series of dangerous obstacles, where wrecks are frequent and 
many lives are lost, had to be passed. Beyond Kiatung the 
journey to Tatien-lu and on into the mountain fastnesses was 
made on foot, and it was at 11,000 feet above the sea that Mr. 
Wilson first sighted the flower he was in search of. From 
1,000 feet higher up to an altitude of 14,500 feet, miles and miles 
of Alpine meadows*were covered with the exquisite yellow 
1 The Gardener's Chronicle , June, 1905, and continued in some thirty 
numbers. 
