?8 
of as large a quantity as 100 catties means many 
weeks of toilsome work and then last not least,- 
the natives eat these little, pea-sized pears as 
early as in June, when they are full grown but 
still green and as they are too acrid to be eaten 
raw, they are boiled. It is said they persist on 
the trees until October, but they are ripe in Sep- 
tember. The local name for this pear is Tang li 
and they are sparingly used as stocks for improved 
varieties of pears, tho ' this region here is not 
a pear-section. 
There are some strange types of Citrus fruits 
here, big warty things, of orange-red color; most 
of them are too sour and bitter to be eaten, but 
the Chinese use them as ornaments, like ornamental 
squashes and the rind is used medicinally and as a 
flavoring material for spirits. 
Mr. Edward Gilchrist, a native of Boston, Com- 
missioner of Customs here, told me that he had for- 
warded types of citrus fruits to Mr. Swingle; he 
is, however, unable to obtain a few hundred pounds 
of Pistacia chinensis seeds which Mr. Swingle also 
wants, as this tree is not common enough here to 
collect seeds in quantity. Should you see Mr. 
Swingle kindly communicate this to him. 
We have been very unfortunate v/ith the v/eather 
ever since we left Peking; in Shantung we had cold, 
dusty winds; in North Kiangsu (Hsuchowfu) overcast, 
dusty weather and in Hankow rain practically all 
the time. From Hankow by boat to here took 4 days 
and 3 nights, for the water in the Yangtze is low 
and on account of the many sandbanks the steamers 
stop during the night; we had rain about every day 
and here also the weather is dull almost every day. 
Bad of course to take fotos. In Hsuchowfu we had 
been in hopes of getting some fine varieties of 
jujubes and of haws ( Crataegus pinnatifida ) as the 
town is famous for these products; upon inquiry, 
however, we found that the jujubes they manufacture 
into "Mitsao" come from Honan and the haw fruits 
come from Taianfu, Shantung. For some reason or 
another this town formerly had cheaper sugar than 
other places and they found it profitable to import 
fruits from other provinces and to manufacture sweet- 
meats from them. 
We took a newly built R.R. from Hsuchowfu , Kiang- 
su, to Kaifengfu, Honan, which is not on maps yet 
and from the car windows I saw plantations of a new 
shrub, which I recognized as a Pueraria. Upon in- 
quiries we were told that the flowers are eaten as 
December 31, 1917. 
