14 THE RHODODENDRONS OF SKKIM-HIMALAYA.
spongy moss, often bend down and touch the ground: the foliage, moreover, is scanty, dark green, and far from
graceful; so that notwithstanding the gorgeous colouring of the blossoms, the trees when out of flower, like the Fuchsias of
Cape Horn, are the gloomy denizens of a most gloomy region. R. Gampbellics and R. harhatum I observed to fringe a
little swampy tarn on the summit of the mountain,—a peculiarly chilly-looking, small lake, bordered with Sphagnum., and
half-choked with Carices and other sedges: the atmosphere was loaded with mist, and the place seems as if it would
be aguish if it could, but was checked by the cold climate. R. harhatum had almost passed its flowering season: it is a
less abundant and smaller tree than the last mentioned, but more beautiful in the brighter green and denser foliage, clean,
papery, light-coloured bark, the whole forming a more picturesque mass.
Along the north-east and exposed ridges only, grew the R. Falconeri, in foliage incomparably the finest. It
throws out one or two trunks, clean and smooth, thirty feet or so high, sparingly branched: the branches terminated
by the immense leaves, deep green above, edged with yellow, and rusty red-brown below. The flowers are smaller, but
more numerous in each head than in the two last mentioned (R. Campbellue and R. harhatum).
The temperature of the earth in which the above species grew, was, in the middle of May, at twenty-seven inches
below the surface where the roots are chiefly developed, 49° 5' at all hours of the d ay t ha t of the air varied from
50° to 60°.
In naming the new species before me of this eminently Himalayan genus, I have wished to record the services of
some of those gentlemen who, besides Mr. Griffith (to whom a species had been already dedicated by Dr. Wight), have most
deeply studied the vegetable productions of the country: they are Drs. Wallich, Hoyle, and Falconer. With their names
that of Dr. Campbell, the Political Resident at Darjeeling, author of various excellent Essays on the Agriculture, Arts,
Products, and People, &c., of Nepal and Sikkim, is no less appropriately associated; and in compliment to his amiable
Lady I designate that Rhododendron which is most characteristic of Darjeeling vegetation j while to the Lady of the
present Governor-General of India, I have, as a mark of grateful esteem and respect, dedicated the noblest species of the
whole race. J. J). JET.