6 PREFACE. 
“Such is the aspect of the Himalaya range at early morning. As the sun’s rays dart into the many valleys which 
lie between the snowy mountains and Darjeeling, the stagnant air contained in the low recesses becomes quickly heated : 
heavy masses of vapour, dense, white, and keenly defined, arise from the hollows, meet over the crests of the hills, cling to 
the forests on their summits, enlarge, unite, and ascend rapidly to the rarefied regions above,—a phenomenon so suddenly 
developed, that the consequent withdrawal from the spectator’s gaze of the stupendous scenery beyond, looks like the work 
of magic.” Such is the region of the Indian Rhododendrons. 
Perhaps, with the exception of the Rose, the Queen of Flowers, no plants have excited a more lively interest 
throughout Hurope than the several species of the genus Rhododendron, whether the fine evergreen foliage be considered, 
or the beauty and profusion of the blossoms ; and it may probably be said with truth, that no kind of flowering shrub 
is so casily, and has been so extensively, cultivated, or has formed so vast an article of traffic, as that one oriental species 
to which the name seems more immediately to have been given, the Rhododendron Ponticum. Its poisonous qualities, too, 
have tended to bring it the more into notice; for, to eating the honey collected by the bees from that plant, (as well as from 
the Azalea Pontica,) in the neighbourhood of Trebizond, during the celebrated retreat of the Ten Thousand, were attributed 
the dreadful sufferings of the Greeks; so severe that their actions were said to resemble those of drunken persons 
or madmen. Major Madden has stated that cattle sometimes perish by feeding upon the foliage and flowers of Riodo- 
dendron arboreum in the mountains of Kamaoon. Dr. Hooker remarks, on a recent tour while exploring the mountain- 
passes leading into Thibet :—* Here are three Rhododendrons, two of them resinous and strongly odoriferous ; and it is to 
the presence of these plants that the natives attribute the painful sensations experienced at great elevations.” 
The 2. Ponticum, which inhabits the mountains of Asia Minor and extends as far west as Spain and Portugal, together 
with 2. ferruginewm and hirsutum of the European Alps, 2. Dahuricum of Siberia, R. Chamacistus of the Austrian and 
Piedmontese mountains, 2. maximum of the United States of America, and the arctic 2. Lapponicum, were all the kinds 
known to Linneeus and to the botanical world so recently as 1764. The beautiful R. chrysanthum of Northern Siberia 
appeared in Linneus’ Supplement. Gmelin added the 2. Kaméschaticum from Okotsk and Behring’s Straits, and Pallas 
the charming 2. Caucasicum from the Caucasian Alps. 
Towards the very close of the 18th century, namely in 1796, 2. arborewm, the first of a new form and aspect of the 
genus, and peculiar to the lofty mountains of India Proper, was discovered by Captain Hardwicke, in the Sewalic chain 
of the Himalaya, while he was on a tour to Sireenagur. The species has since been found to have a very extended range. 
Tt was published in 1805 by Sir James E. Smith, in the “ Exotic Botany” of that author, and is characterized by its 
arborescent stem, very rich scarlet flowers, and leaves that are silvery on the underside. Sir James, on the authority 
no doubt of Captain Hardwicke, gives the height of the tree at twenty feet; but Major Madden, who found it on the 
mountains of Kamaoon, at elevations of from 3,500 to 10,000 feet, says he might safely have doubled that measurement. 
On Binaur, a ¢rwnk was found to be thirteen feet in girth, and another at Nynee Tal, sixteen feet ; while a third, at 
Singabee Devee, was fourteen feet and a half in the circumference of the stem at five fect from the ground. 
1 So called, as is well known, from ‘680, a rose, and dadpov, a tree: a name, however, which was given with equal justice to the 
Rose-bay, Nerium Oleander, the po8odéyy of the modern Greeks. 
