GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS. 557 
head from a heap of stones and dwarf plants, which covered all 
these heights ; the round-headed Phyteuma, the hairy Andrasace 
the Ononis of Mount Cenis, and three species of Arenaria, clung 
to the rocks or peeped through the stones.” 
For the sake of comparison let us leave Provence and Europe, 
and glance at the Fan ges, in the heart of Asia, of the lofty Hima- 
layas, or ‘“‘abode of snow,” as the word means, in the figurative lan- 
guage of the Asiatics. Dr. Hooker passed the rainy season of 1848 
in the sanitary establishment of Dorjilling, the farthest English 
possession, in Sikkim, seven thousand two hundred feet above the 
sea, having in sight the loftiest peaks of the range. Twelve of these 
are more than twenty-four thousand feet high, and one of them, 
Kinchinjunga, attains the height of twenty-nine thousand three 
hundred feet. Mount Chumulari, another giant of the Himalayas 
of Thibet, was visible from a neighbouring peak, the Sinchul, 
during the ascent of which the author made his first acquaintance 
with some of the beautiful Rhododendrons with which he afterwards 
enriched the gardens of Europe. ‘In the month of May,” says 
the Doctor, “when the Magnolias and Rhododendrons are in flower, 
the magnificent vegetation of the Sinchul yields nothing in certain 
respects to that of the tropics, the beauty. of the effect being, how- 
ever, much diminished by the constant gloom of the season. The 
white-flowered Magnolia (J. excelsa) is one of the trees which 
predominate at the elevation of seven thousand to eight thousand 
feet, and in 1848 it had flowered so abundantly that it seemed as 
if the broad sides of the Sinchul and other mountains at the same 
elevation were covered with snow. The purplish-flowered species 
(M. Campbellii) does not appear under the elevation of eight 
thousand feet. It is a large but unsightly tree, with dark— 
almost. black—bark, and few branches, destitute of leaves in winter 
and while in blossom, but throwing out at the extremity of the 
branches great bell-shaped flowers of a purplish rose colour, the 
fleshy petals of which cover all the surrounding soil. 
“Upon its branches and upon the Oaks and Laurels, the Rhodo- 
dendron Dalhousia, a slender creeping shrub, grows as an epi- 
phyte, bearing at the extremity of its branches from three to six 
white bell-shaped flowers, citronous in odour and with leaves five to 
six inches in length. The scarlet-flowered Rhododendron is rare 
