3^i)ot)obenbron ^octetp ^otei^. 
flowered in this country by the spring of 1825, makes the suggestion improbable. 
We hardly think that plants raised only eight years earlier could have had time 
to reach the flowering state. 
Captain Thomas Hardwicke was probably not the first European to see 
R. ARBOREUM in flower, but he was the first to put its existence on record. He 
made a journey to Srinagur between March and May, 1796, of which journey 
he published, three years later, an account in the Asiatick Researches, Vol. VI. 
At page 359 occurs the following : " Growing in forests of oak on the high 
ridge of mountains near Adwaanee is a large tree just now conspicuous for its 
abundant display of large crimson flowers. Leaves without order about the 
upper part of the branches, petioled, lance-oblong, entire, smooth above, hoary- 
white beneath. Flowers produced in terminal racemes. . . Corol one-petaled, 
tubular, bell-mouthed. . . . Stamens ten, of unequal length. . . . Style longer 
than the stamens. It approaches nearest to Rhododendron, but vdll probably 
not be admitted there ; and perhaps will form a new genus. The natives call 
it Boorans, the wood is used for making the stocks of matchlocks.” 
The tree here referred to is undoubtedly R. arboreum, and this seems to be 
the first description of that plant ever printed. 
Sir James Smith in his Exotic Botany, published at Norvach in 1804, first 
applied the name of R. arboreum to this plant, and gave a coloured plate of it 
(tab. 6). He says ” first noticed by Captain Hardwicke on a tour to Sireenagur 
in 1796, growing in a mountainous tract called the Sewalic Chain, which separates 
the plains of Hindostan between 75° and 85° east longitude from the Himmaleh 
Mountains. Generally found in forests of oak, the soil a rich vegetable black 
earth. It flowers in March and April, and ripens seed late in May or early in June, 
a few days befoie the commencement of the periodical rains. We are obliged 
to Captain Hardwicke for our description and drawng, both made on the spot. 
It is hoped that the seeds which that gentleman has liberally distributed in 
England will enrich our collections with this noble tree.” 
How the misapprehension entertained by Smith as to the original locality of 
R. ARBOREUM may have arisen it is difficult to say. There is no record of the 
occurrence of R. arboreum in the Siwaliks in the works of Brandis, Duthie and 
Kanji Lai, dealing with this range of hills, whose highest peak only reaches a 
height of 3,500 feet, which barely exceeds the lowest recorded limit of this tree. 
Mr. J. S. Gamble, whom we have consulted, informs us that although he has 
crossed the Siwaliks at many points, and actually had to make an inspection 
path nearly the whole way along the crest of the range, he never saw or heard 
of R. ARBOREUM there. He adds that Ouercus incana, the almost inseparable 
companion of R. arboreum, is equally absent from the Siwaliks, and that 
although this oak does occur in one swamp locality in the Dehra Dun, which 
separates the Siwaliks from the Himalaya, it is not in that rather special locality 
accompanied by the Rhododendron. 
We know, however, that on his tour to Srinagar, in Kamaon, in 1796, 
Hardwicke did not cross the Siwaliks. His route took him from Najibabad, 
in the Bijnaur district, which place he left on 20th April, 1796, to Kotdwara, at 
the foot of the Garhwal Himalayas, through the wide gap which separates the 
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