In 1922 Rock took up his residence in Li-chiang, the heart of the Na-khi country. His interest in these aboriginal people and their unique culture led him to make, a decade later, his life work the study of the Na-khi tribe of northwest Yün-nan Province. Using Li-chiang as a base, Rock explored and collected plants on the nearby Snow Range to the 17,000 foot level, in the Kingdom of Mu-li, and along the Burma-China border. By 1923 he was far into Yün-nan Province in southwest China, and the National Geographic Society took over the sponsorship of his explorations for more than a year.

In order to understand and predict the actions of water in the climate system it is useful to think of the water as being part of a distinct system, sometimes called the hydrological cycle[…]. A complete understanding of this system would […] require excursions into geomorphology, pedology, botany, glaciology, oceanography and, if human structures are included as part of the Earth's surface, civil engineering.

From all this we may draw the conclusion that papal principate was instituted for the utility and advantage of its subjects and not for the honour and glory or the utility and temporal advantage of the holder of the principate, in such a way as that such principate deserves to be be called 'of service' and not of 'lordship'.

Such persons we have seen rushing from one wild extreme to another, out-Paining Paine, out-Castlereaghing Castlereagh, Pantisocratists, Ultra-Tories, heretics, persecutors