^t)e 3Rt)obobeni5ioit ^o£ietj> Sotes>. 
portion of the Siwaliks lying west of the Ganges from that part of the range 
to the east of the river. From Kotdwara to Srinagar his route, which consisted 
of nine marches, lay wholly in the Himalayas. His fourth march from Kotdwara, 
on April 24th, brought him to Belkate, 78°45' E., 29°58' N., through forests of 
oak, fir and ‘‘ boorans ” (R. arboreum), which tree his journal then mentions 
for the first time. Next day he reached Nataana, 5,100 feet, 78°45' E., 30°5' N., 
and the close of his march on April 26th, brought him to Adwaanee, a name not 
to be found on modern maps, along a ridge which reaches the level of 7,000 feet 
in long. 78°47' E. and lat. 30°6' N. 
Smith’s mistake had already been detected by Don, who in 1825 indicated 
correctly that Hardwicke’s specimens of R. arboreum had come from Kamaon, 
where at a later date, Kamrup, one of Wallich’s native collectors, found the 
tree again. 
Hardwicke, then, has to be credited with the first sending of seeds to this 
country. He must have collected year-old capsules on the tree at the time it 
was in blossom. Whether the seeds grew or not we are not told by Smith, 
although if they had done so they would have been seven years old by then. 
This, with the absence of any mention by W. T. Aiton, in 1814, seems to 
indicate that they failed. 
The first flowering of R. arboreum in England is recorded by Lindley in 
the Botanical Register, under tab. 890, published in London in 1825. Lindlej^ 
says : “ It is now several years since the present plant was raised in this country 
from seed, but not until the last few weeks had it produced its blossoms in any 
collection in Europe. In the beginning of April we were kindly supplied with 
the specimen from which our figure has been taken, by Mrs. Alexander Baring,* 
under the judicious management of whose gardener at The Grange, Mr. Peter 
McArthur, the plant has expanded its flowers in all their beauty.” Lindle}' 
evidently had no precise information of the raising of Mrs. Baring’s plant, and it 
is extremely unlikely that, if Hardwicke’s seeds had grown, the flowering of 
R. ARBOREUM would have been delayed as long as 1825—29 years after he had 
gathered them. On the whole, therefore, we may conclude that they perished, 
and that the plants which flowered in various places over the country in, and 
subsequent to, 1825, were raised from a later sending. 
Sir William Hooker in his Exotic Flora (Edinburgh, 1827), where 
R. ARBOREUM is figured at tab. 168, says : “ well known as a native of Nepal, 
where it was found by Dr. Hamilton and Dr. Wallich about Narainhatty.” 
This locality had already been given by Don in 1825. 
Paxton in his Magazine of Botany, Vol. I., page 101 (London, 1841), writes : 
” The botanical world are indebted to the indefatigable Dr. Wallich for the 
introduction of this, and, we believe, of three other species of Rhododendron 
from the lately explored country of Nepal. ... It was introduced in 1820, the 
white variety of it, we believe, a year or two before.” Paxton is palpably wrong 
* Presumably the wife of Alexander Baring, of The Grange, Northington, 
Arlesford, Hants. He was b. 1774 and d. 1848, and raised to the Peerage 
as Baron Ashburton in 1835. Possibly the Ashburton papers may mention 
the provenance of this plant.—C.C.E. 
177 
