BOTANY. - 347 



al colorations of sea water observed by travellers. M. Mollien, an ex- 

 consul of France, observed last year that the Sea of China was colored 

 yellow and red over a great space, and that this coloration was not con- 

 tinued, but was in patches separated by a transparent interval. The red 

 color predominated in that part of the sea which bathed the coasts of the 

 southern portion of China, south of the Island of Formosa, while the 

 yellow color predominated north of that island in the portion called the 

 Yellow Sea. He gave to M. Camille Dareste a bottle filled with this col- 

 ored water, which he had taken in a place where the water was red ; it 

 had deposited a sediment of a brownish color, which, examined by the 

 microscope, showed an agglomeration of small seaweeds, more or less 

 decayed, but whose remains were sufficiently perfect to enable M. C. Da- 

 reste to ascertain that they belonged to the same species M. Ehrenberg 

 discovered in the Red Sea. We are not able to exhibit so directly that the 

 coloration of the Yellow Sea is caused b}' an analogous vegetation, but M. 

 C. Dareste indicated a remarkable phenomenon observed by Dr. Bellot, R. 

 N., which would seem to prove this supposition : during a shower of dust 

 there, and which lasted for seven hours, during all of which the wind blew 

 from the sea, (north,) he collected the dust Avhich fell. It was a very fine 

 quartz sand, mixed with filaments of an organic nature, impregnated with 

 soda, and presenting every indication of seaweeds. 



VEGETATION UPON THE HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS. 



" Rhododendrons occupy the most prominent place, clothing the moun- 

 tain slopes with a deep-green mantle glowing with bells of brilliant colors ; 

 of the eight or ten species growing here, every bush was loaded with as 

 great a profusion of blossoms as are their northern congeners in our En- 

 glish gardens. Primroses are next, both in beauty and abundance ; and 

 they are accompanied by yellow cowslips, three feet high, purple polyan- 

 thus, and pink large- flowered dwarf kinds nestling in the rocks, and an 

 exquisitely beautiful blue miniature species, whose blossoms sparkle like 

 sapphires on the turf. Gentians begin to unfold their deep azure bells, 

 aconites 'to rear their tall blue spikes, and fritillaries and Meconojisis burst 

 into flower. On the black rocks the gigantic rhubarb forms pale pyrami- 

 dal towers a yard high, of inflated reflexed bracts, that conceal the flowers, 

 and, overlapping one another like tiles, protect them from the wind and 

 rain : a whorl of broad green leaves, edged with red spreads on the ground 

 at the base of the plant, contrasting in color with the transparent bracts, 

 which are yellow, margined with pink. This is the handsomest herbaceous 

 plant in Sikkim : it is called Tchuka,' and the acid stems are eaten both 

 raw and boiled ; they are hollow, and full of pure water : the root resem- 

 bles that of the medicinal rhubarb, but it is spongy and inert ; it attains a 

 length of four feet, and grows as thick as the arm. The dried leaves afford 

 a substitute for tobacco ; a smaller kind of rhubarb is, however, more com- 

 monly used in Tibet for this purpose ; it is called ' Chula.' 



