the
wide range of Flora's domains. How glorious a sight must be the sheeted
Rhododendrons of the Himalaya peaks, on whose lofty elevations Dr Hooker
found these fine plants in great prominence, "clothing the
mountain-slopes with a deep-green mantle, glowing with bells of
brilliant colours; of the eight or ten species growing here, [on the
Zemir, in Sikkim, twelve thousand feet above the sea,] every bush was
loaded with as great a profusion of blossoms as are their northern
congeners in our English gardens!"[221]

The noblest of the genus is that which is dedicated to Lady Dalhousie.
It is an epiphyte, being always found growing, like the Orchids, among
mosses and ferns, upon the trunks of large trees, especially oaks and
magnolias, at an elevation of from seven to ten thousand feet. In this
particular, in the fragrance of its noble white blossoms, in its slender
habit, in the whorled arrangement of its branches, and in the length of
time during which it continues in flower in its native regions, viz.,
from April to July, it differs from all its fellows of the same genus
that inhabit northern India.

The flowers are four inches in length and four in diameter, with a broad
trumpet lip. Their colour is pure white, assuming a delicate rosy tinge
as they become old, and sometimes becoming spotted with orange. They
have an odour which resembles that of the lemon.

Of this and the following species Dr Hooker writes from Dorjiling, seven
thousand feet above the sea:--"On the branches of the immense
purple-flowered magnolia, (_M. Campbellii_,) and those of oaks and
laurels, _Rhododendron Dalhousiae_ grows epiphytally, a slender shrub
bearing from three to six white lemon-scented bells, four and a half
inches long and so many broad, at the end of each branch. In the same
woods the scarlet Rhododendron (_R. arboreum_) is very scarce, and is
outvied by the great _R. argenteum_, which grows as a tree, forty feet
high, with magnificent leaves twelve to fifteen inches long, deep green
wrinkled above and silvery below, while the flowers are as large as
those of _R. Dalhousiae_ and grow more in a cluster. I know nothing of
the kind that exceeds in beauty the flowering branch of _R. argenteum_,
with its wide-spreading foliage and glorious mass of flowers."[222]

The latter, which is nearly equal to _R. Dalhousiae_ in the size of its
blossoms, and perhaps superior to it in other respects, is another
white-flowered species. It is, as