oker
during his journey, and which he has figured and described in his
beautiful work, _The Rhododendron of Sikkim-Himalaya_. It is called
_R. nivale_, or snow-rhododendron. 'The hard, woody branches of this
curious little species, as thick as a goose-quill, struggle along the
ground for a foot or two, presenting brown tufts of vegetation where
not half-a-dozen other plants can exist. The branches are densely
interwoven, very harsh and woody, wholly depressed; whence the shrub,
spreading horizontally, and barely raised two inches above the soil,
becomes eminently typical of the arid, stern climate it inhabits. The
latest to bloom, and earliest to mature its seeds, by far the smallest
in foliage, and proportionally largest in flower, most lepidote in
vesture, humble in stature, rigid in texture, deformed in habit, yet
the most odoriferous, it may be recognised, even in the herbarium, as
the production of the loftiest elevation on the surface of the
globe--of the most excessive climate--of the joint influences of a
scorching sun by day, and the keenest frost by night--of the greatest
drought, followed in a few hours by a saturated atmosphere--of the
balmiest calm, alternating with the whirlwind of the Alps. For eight
months of the year, it is buried under many feet of snow; for the
remaining four, it is frequently snowed on and sunned in the same
hour. During genial weather, when the sun heats the soil to 150
degrees, its perfumed foliage scents the air; whilst to snow-storm and
frost it is insensible: blooming through all; expanding its little
purple flowers to the day, and only closing them to wither after
fertilisation has taken place. As the life of a moth may be
indefinitely prolonged whilst its duties are unfulfilled, so the
flower of this little mountaineer will remain open through days of fog
and sleet, till a mild day facilitates the detachment of the pollen
and the fecundation of the ovarium. This process is almost wholly the
effect of winds; for though humblebees, and the "Blues" and
"Fritillaries" (_Polyommatus_ and _Argynnis_) amongst butterflies, do
exist at this prodigious elevation, they are too few in number to
influence the operations of vegetable life.' To this Dr Hooker adds:
'This singular little plant attains a loftier elevation, I believe,
than any other shrub in the world.'

But here is a plant, or rather flower, more curious than any we have
seen. The corolla is on a long stalk, a foot or more hi