the material as sent home by the collector usually consists of (1) a series of dried specimens, each numbered and consisting of leaves, shoots, flowers and fruit, and (2) packets of seed also numbered, and if possible from the same individual plant. The dried specimens from the original source are presented to one of the herbaria where they serve as a permanent record. A sample of the seed should also be preserved in the same way. When a plant proves to be new to science it is described and the specimen constitutes the "type specimen " of the species. Our national herbaria are very rich in such "types." The seeds, on the other hand, are distributed to interested persons and sown at once. If the collector is a botanist he can label the seed with sufficient accuracy for the gardener to have, pending exact determination, some idea of how to treat the seedlings. The names, when definitely ascertained, are circulated or published from the herbarium concerned, together with the collector's reference number.

There are fashions in gardening as in everything else, and during recent years, tender exotics have been neglected for the outdoor garden with its alpines, herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees. After the war, owing to the increased cost of glass and heating, this became even more marked. Consequently the present-day quest for new plants does not lie so much in the direction of the tropics as in temperate countries, although through various agencies, as hitherto, promising garden plants from all parts are introduced as opportunity offers.

Great Britain not only fosters the desire for good plants, but she does more than any other country to search for and obtain them. In spite of all the plants we have, collectors are still actively at work. Indeed, no sooner was the war over than plans were made for further expeditions to China. The financial support for such enterprises is now seldom borne by the trade, but chiefly by a band of enthusiastic plant-lovers, who form a syndicate for the purpose. Many expeditions have been financed in this way, and the keen amateurs who provide the funds render no small service to horticulture and to botanical science.

The great field of exploration during the present century has been in China, especially in the provinces of Hupeh, Kansu, Szechwan, and Yunnan, and the adjoining parts of Tibet and

Burma; so much so that, during the past twenty years, far more plants have been introduced from this region than from all the rest of the world together. The flora of south-west China is wonderfully rich, a fact perhaps partly to be accounted for by its central position in the continent, its vast mountain systems and its connection with the Himalayas and the tropics to the south. It may have been possibly also a refuge for numerous geologically old genera and species. Its most remarkable feature is not so much the number of genera, but the abundance of species, this being particularly striking in rhododendron, where closely allied but apparently distinct species inhabit adjoining valleys.

In the great work of exploration, Englishmen have been very prominent. Following the work of the French missionaries, Delavay, Farges and David, and our fellow-countryman, A. Henry, all of whom greatly stimulated our curiosity and whetted our desire, we have during this century the names of E. H. Wilson, G. Forrest, W. Purdom, Reginald Farrer, and F. Kingdon Ward.

E. H. Wilson, an old Kewite, and now Assistant Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, made four expeditions to China. His first two trips to Hupeh and Szechwan, were on behalf of Messrs. Veitch, and his second two for the Arnold Arboretum. He specialized in hardy shrubs and a large number of his introductions adorn our gardens. The record* of his results, edited by C. S. Sargent, Director of the Arboretum, contains the names of 2716 species and 640 varieties of woody plants alone, many of which were new to science. Subsequently he made two trips to Japan, searching the southernmost portion of that country, and also Korea and Formosa.

Purdom was also a Kewite. He made two expeditions. The first for Messrs. Veitch and Harvard University, in 1909, visiting Chihli, Inner Mongolia, Shansi, Shensi, but chiefly Kansu and the Tibetan border. He returned to China in 1914 as travelling companion to Farrer, spending two years in Kansu and Koko Nor. He died at Pekin in 1921. One of his best introductions was Meconopsis quintuplinervia.

Farrer is known to all as the keen amateur gardener, ardent collector and vivid writer. With a view to obtaining a more hardy type of plants he spent two years with Purdom in Kansu

*Planta Wilsonianæ, i-iii.; Cambridge, 1913-1919.

and on the Tibetan frontier (1914-16). In 1919 he proceeded to Upper Burma with E. H. M. Cox, and on to the Ah Kyang Valley in 1920, where he fell a victim to dipthheria in the prime of life. He had a keen eye for good plants, and his name is commemorated by Gentiana Farreri, Buddleia Farreri and Aster Farreri, all of which he discovered. He sent home a number of seeds, including two first-rate plants, viz., Buddleia alternifolia and Viburnum fragrans.

George Forrest has recently completed his sixth expedition to China. Having concentrated his activities on Yunnan and Szechwan, he has a unique knowledge of that wonderful area, and heads the list as an introducer of new plants. His first expedition covered three years (1904-7), during which he explored especially the Lichiang range and the Tali region, and an account of this and his next two expeditions is summarized in Millais* (series ii).

The Lichiang range, a mass of lime-stone, with peaks 20,000ft. high, juts into the valley of the Yangtse and diverts its course for seventy miles. It is now celebrated horticulturally for the fact that, though it consists of magnesium lime-stone, it supports a wonderful growth of rhododendrons. Forrest's subsequent expeditions have yielded a rich return in the way of choice plants, and especially rhododendrons. With regard to the country between Tali and Lichiang, Forrest writes :—

Nowhere in Yunnan, not even in the more prolific regions of the north-west is there such a display of bloom during the months of April and May. Forests of tree rhododendrons, comprising fully a dozen of the finer species, are flanked and backed by moors and meadows which are literally carpeted by masses of dwarf cushion-species bearing flowers of every imaginable shade, from the deepest purple to the palest lilac. . . . The cream of the flora is, however, on the alpine pastures and the many enormous screest which lie from 14,000ft. to the limit of vegetation. There is seen a wealth of species, possibly equalled but nowhere surpassed, in all the regions of Yunnan hitherto explored.

Lastly, there is F. Kingdon Ward, son of the late H. Marshall Ward, Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge. He has also travelled extensively in south-west China and Tibet, and has paid considerable attention to the Alps of Burma. In common with Forrest, Ward has been greatly attracted to primulas and *Millais, "Rhododendrons and their Hybrids." Longmans, Green and Co., 1917; series ii., 1924. †Stony slopes.

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rhododendrons. He has, however, made a special study of the genus Meconopsis. He has made in all nine expeditions, and during his last he explored the gorge of the Tsangpo in southeastern Tibet, and confirmed the discovery by Bailey that the Tsangpo of Tibet and the Bramaputra of Assam were parts of the same river. During this trip he made a very valuable collection which is being worked out at Kew. In the beginning of 1926 he set out again for Burma. In addition to those mentioned above, there are at work in the East collectors of other nations, some of whose plants find their way to England. This is particularly the case with seeds collected by the American botanist, J. F. Rock, who has been sent to Yunnan and Kansu on behalf of the National Museum at Washington and the Arnold Arboretum respectively.

With this mass of material from the East it is not surprising that attention has turned to other parts, and the Andes of Chile and the Argentine are being explored at the moment. This region has been fairly well worked and has supplied us with such first-rate plants as Desfontania spinosa, Berberis Darwinii, Eucryphia pinnatifolia and Embothrium coccineum. The flora is not nearly so rich as that of China, and novelties in the way of large showy plants are hardly to be expected, but interest which has been simmering since before the war resulted in a small body of enthusiastic plant-lovers organizing expeditions to the province of Neuquen in the Argentine and the adjoining province of Valdivia in Chile. The first collector (A. B. Goethe) was sent out in 1923 and reported favourably. In 1925, H. F. Comber, of the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, proceeded to the same region. The collections brought home are providing novelties in the way of small shrubs, and though the work of determination is not yet completed, the prospects are so good that Comber has been sent out a second time.

There is still an abundance of charming plants in South Africa, which would be quite suitable for cultivation here had we more sunshine. In the case of these plants, abundant sun is required both to produce flowers and to show them to advantage; also to ripen bulbs and corms and to enable annuals to set seeds. Additions continue to arrive, but there seems no reason why bulbs and seeds should not be annually imported from South Africa to a larger extent than at present.

Efforts are also being made to effect a more systematic introduction of New Zealand plants, several of our enthusiastic amateurs

being of the opinion that the possibilities in that direction are far from exhausted. The prospect for Australian plants is not so hopeful, except for greenhouse work or for the favoured counties of the south-west.

Another region which has attracted attention recently is the Balkan Peninsula. This has already given us many plants, and was visited by several English botanists in pre-war days. Many an officer when in Greece was struck by the beauty of the flowers, and the interest aroused then has resulted in numerous collections of dried plants and also packets of seeds being sent home. The whole flora is being critically worked out by W. B. Turrill, of Kew, who was stationed in Greek Macedonia and has since paid three visits, investigating different parts of the Peninsula. He describes the flora as very rich and consisting of two main types, the Mediterranean and Central European, and he estimates the number of species at about 6500. Turrill has brought home some 500 packets of seeds and has already introduced a number of good things to Kew, whence they will be distributed. Future collectors are most likely to find new plants suitable for gardens in Albania, Macedonia, Epirus, and north Greece; but everywhere species of beauty and interest occur in a great range of habitats. There are many species of Dianthus, Verbascum, Silene, Veronica, and Viola not yet introduced into cultivation, to say nothing of bulbous plants, such as Muscari, Fritillaria, Tulipa, Gagea, Scilla and Crocus.

In addition to these special areas, private enterprise is at work in many other parts, collecting agents being known to be employed in Japan, Corea, the Caucasus and Asia Minor, as well as in various parts of America.

Turning now to the gain to horticulture, reference may be made in the first place to that noteworthy publication, the Botanical Magazine, which contains over 9000 coloured plates of all that is best in garden plants. This periodical was for many years a semi-official journal of Kew, but is now the property of the Royal Horticultural Society. The Botanical Magazine, in addition to supplying a coloured drawing, provides a full description and general account of each of the species dealt with. It includes in its range all classes of ornamental garden plants, and is one of the most valuable serials in the whole of horticultural