Am.  Jour.  Pharm.\ 
Jan. ,  1887.  j 
Plants  of  Afghanistan. 
39 
Ripon,  Naturalist  with  the  Afghan  Delimitation  Commission.  The 
British  Commissioner,  Sir  Peter  Lumsden,  G.C.B.,  coming  direct 
from  England,  joined  the  Indian  portion  of  the  mission  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  proposed  boundary.  The  party  from  India,  commanded  by 
Colonel — now  Sir  West — Ridgeway,  left  India  in  the  end  of  August, 
Quetta  on  September  22,  1884,  marched  through  northern  Beluchis- 
tan  to  the  Helmand,  thence  through  Afghanistan  to  Khusan,  which 
was  reached  on  November  18.  During  1885  I  travelled  over  a  great 
extent  of  country  in  northern  Afghanistan  and  Persia,  finally  left  the 
mission  on  August  16,  1885,  proceeding  through  Khorasan  via  Mes- 
had  and  Astrabad  to  the  Caspian,  thence  via  Baku,  Batoum  and 
Constantinople  to  England. 
In  making  my  collections  it  was  one  of  my  principal  aims  to  obtain 
those  plants  which  yielded  products  of  commercial  value,  and  person- 
ally to  collect  from  the  living  plant  the  product  it  yields,  taking  noth- 
ing for  granted  or  on  heresay  only,  hoping  thus  to  assist  materially  in 
elucidating  the  many  diverse  opinions  held  relative  to  the  substances 
themselves,  as  well  as  to  the  plants  that  yield  them.  I  also  considered 
it  of  great  importance  to  obtain  good  specimens  for  botanical  identifi- 
cation, with  seeds  for  cultivation,  and  when  possible,  the  local  names 
of  the  plant  and  product  were  noted.  I  need  hardly  tell  you  that 
this  was  but  a  fragment  of  my  work,  having  brought  to  England 
some  eight  hundred  species  of  dried  plants,  amounting  in  all  proba- 
bility to  ten  thousand  specimens,  in  addition  to  my  numerous  zoologi- 
cal collections.  Although  the  work  was  intensely  interesting  it  was 
of  necessity  laborious,  and  the  difficulties  to  be  overcome  were  numer- 
ous, but  now  that  I  have  begun  to  discover  the  value  of  the  material 
amassed,  these  troubles  and  labors  are  well  nigh  forgotten. 
The  class  of  plants  with  their  products,  upon  which  I  propose 
speaking  to  you  first  this  evening,  and  in  which  I  feel  sure  you  will 
be  most  interested,  is  the  Umbelliferce  which  form  the  characteristic 
vegetation  of  the  region  under  consideration.  The  country  in  which 
these  Umbellifero3  flourish  consists  of  the  great  shingle  and  conglom- 
erate plains  lying  between  the  hills  and  the  beds  of  the  rivers,  which 
are  broken  up  by  numerous  ravines  and  traversed  by  what  are  usually 
dry  water  courses,  which  once  in  every  two  or  three  years,  on  the 
occurrence  of  heavy  falls  of  snow  on  the  hills  above,  or  local  showers 
of  rain,  suddenly  become  roaring  torrents.  The  altitude  of  these 
plains  above  the  sea  level  ranges  from  2,000  to  4,000  feet.  These 
