Cuar. IT.] BOTANY. 21 
interest. to the lover of ornamental flowering plants. 
Here, however, under the ever-dripping rocks, we 
find the beautiful Chirita sinensis, a plant with 
elegant foxglove lilac flowers, which I sent to the 
Horticultural Society soon after I arrived in China, 
and which is now to be found in many of the gar- 
dens of England. 
It is a curious fact connected with the vegetation 
of Hong-kong, that all the most ornamental flower- 
ing plants are found high up on the mountains, from 
a thousand to two thousand feet above the level 
of the sea. In the northern parts of China, such 
as Chusan and the mountainous country near 
Ning-po, the same description of plants are indi- 
genous to less elevated situations, and there, on the 
tops of the hills, we find little else than species of 
grass, wild roses and violets, thus showing how 
plants accommodate themselves to the climate, by 
choosing a higher or lower altitude as the climate 
in which they are placed may be hot or cold. All 
the beautiful plants indigenous to Hong-kong, with 
the exceptions already pointed out, grow and 
flourish high up amongst the hills: Several species 
of Azalea, a plant now so well known in England, 
are found covering the sides of the hills at least 
fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, and 
they are not met with at all at a low elevation on 
the same hills. The Polyspora axillaris grows in 
the same situations, and another plant, perhaps 
the most beautiful of all; I mean the Hnkianthus 
reticulatus. This plant is very highly prized by the 
ct 3 
