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day’s journey. This allusion to variableness in one respect leads me to express 
a hope that by selection of seedlings, and a wholesale practice of outdoor planting, 
we may arrive at even an entirely hardy form. 
In Sikkim our plant occupies an elevation of from 7,000 feet to 9,000 feet, 
which is considerably higher than the average elevation occupied by R. arboreum 
and its near allies. If R. arboreum has not been acclimatized, yet how much 
of its scarlet blood flows in the veins of our splendid and entirely hardy garden 
hybrids. 
One word, then, on the present progress of hybridising. The Garden 
figured in June, 1877, the beautiful blossoms of plants raised between 
R. Aucklandii and the hardy “ John Waterer,” by Mr. Scott, at Lawson’s, 
Edinburgh. One of this breed bloomed with me this year (some time ago they 
were parted with as of no value), and was, very justly, much admired. I have 
seen many of the same strain, the individuals of which differed in the size, colour, 
and perfume of the flowers. Mr. Luscombe has another strain, for he wrote to 
The Garden in 1879 : " Hybrid Rhododendrons are quite safe, especially some 
very fine white varieties from the Sikkim Aucklandii.” 
Messrs. Standish have a third, and I possess a fourth, on all of which I have 
written elsewhere. 
There are said to be also hybrids between this species and R. Thomsonii and 
R. ARBOREUM pure. These hybrids, so far as they have proved themselves, and 
I know, are fertile, so that by cross breeding among them, an entirely new race, 
as various possibly as in the case of hybrids from R. arboreum, may presently 
be produced. 
Let it be remembered that the plants which we now so largely cultivate of 
this latter strain are not plants of the first cross. I grow from sentiment, perhaps, 
and as a curiosity, R. " altaclarense,” the first hybrid raised from R. 
ARBOREUM, but how miserably tender it is ! The second quarter of the century 
was spent in improving upon the first essay, and we now enjoy the results. 
Similar efforts must be made with the offspring of R. Aucklandii, from 
which I have very strong hopes of seeing a race as celebrated and as popular as 
in the case of R. arboreum. 
J. H. M. 
103 
