Page:Flora Hongkongensis.djvu/15

Rh made several interesting additions to the known plants of that colony, removed with his regiment to Hongkong. He remained there three years, and during his leisure moments devoted himself with ardour to the investigation of the Flora of the island. He very early transmitted to his friend the late Dr. Gardner, then Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens at Peradenia, in Ceylon, several entirely new species, descriptions of which that botanist remitted for publication to Sir W. Hooker, who inserted them in the first volume of his ‘Kew Journal of Botany.’ On his return to England in 1850, Col. Champion brought with him a fine collection of between five and six hundred species of phænogamous plants and ferns, the result of his labours. These included the great majority of the dicotyledonous plants, orchids and ferns, which have hitherto been found in the vicinity of Victoria, in the rich watery or wooded valleys of the north-west from West Point to the Happy Valley, and thence up to the principal central peaks. Mounts Victoria, Gough, and Parker. He had also extended his herborizations to Chuck-Chew (Stanley) on the south coast, and to Saywan on the east, and perhaps to a few other distant points, but he had seldom been able to visit the back of the island, and we miss in his collection a few interesting species previously gathered by Mr. Hinds about Tytam-took, as well as the Flora of the maritime sands generally. He paid also but little attention to glumaceous plants, or indeed to almost any monocotyledons except orchids. Early in 1851 he placed in my hands a complete set of his specimens, accompanied frequently by analytical sketches and descriptions made on the spot, and almost always by most valuable memoranda relating to precise station, to stature, colour, etc., which it were to be wished were less neglected by the majority of collectors; and on leaving England for the fatal Crimean campaign, he deposited the remaining specimens which he had reserved for himself, in the herbarium of Sir W. J. Hooker. In the meantime, with Col. Champion's assistance, I had proceeded to the enumeration of the species gathered by him, including descriptions of numerous entirely new ones, which appeared successively in detached portions in Hooker's ‘Kew Journal of Botany,’ vols. iii. to vii. and ix.

Dr., now at Canton, has been almost continuously resident in Southern China since 1844, and the greater portion of the time in Hongkong, where he zealously applied himself to the study of the Flora of the island. He remitted a few descriptions of species which he believed to be new, to Sir W. J. Hooker, who published them in the first volume of his ‘Kew Journal of Botany,’ and placed the diagnoses