152 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
dered of an inferior quality to that which grows in Iceland, but it is the 
same plant. i 
And the sea also helps out the food of the Greenlanders, by whom 
three or four kinds are eaten. This is the vegetable food, to which they 
have recourse in time of need, and especially the sort called Aukpad- 
lartole, or “the red." It is said in another place that the sea, along 
the coasts of Greenland, nourishes a growth of weeds which resemble — 
marine groves, some kinds having leaves of six or eight ells in length 
and a quarter of an ell in breadth, and filled with living creatures. 
BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
RHODODENDRONS of Sikkim- Himalaya. 
The ‘ Kew Garden’ Miscellany may well feel an interest in the flower- 
iug of the various Rhododendrons introduced by Dr. Hooker to that es- 
tablishment, and thence widely distributed. Their number and beauty, 
their peculiar native localities, at different elevations (from 5000 feet to 
18,000 feet) of the loftiest mountains in the world, together with the 
fact of some of them being epiphytal, have occasioned various specula- 
tions on the part of Horticulturists regarding the suecess that might 
attend their cultivation in Europe. There were not wanting those who 
questioned the accuracy of the representations of those species most 
remarkable for the size and beauty of their flowers. In less than three 
years from the time of the introduction of the first seed that was re- 
ceived, not a few of the above-mentioned doubts and queries have been 
answered or set at rest; and kat one which of all others it was most - 
desired to see flourish here, which from the size of its flowers (43 inches 
across the mouth) may be considered the gem of the collection, while - 
as an epiphyte (for the trees at Sikkim were loaded with it) it was 
the most despaired of, the Rhod., Dathousie,—that has already, by the 
skill of an accomplished gardener in Scotland, been brought to flower, 
with blossoms quite equal to what have been seen and described in 
the native country of the plant. Five distinct species have already 
produced blossoms (the more easily because cultivated in a cool green- 
