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New Zealand Mail, Issue 29, 12 August 1871, Page 5

A Gorgeous Flower. —In the centre of the great conservatory of the Royal Horticultural Society there stands what is most probably the most magnificent floral object that has ever been beheld in Europe. Ibis consists of a plant —or rather a tree, for it is upwards of twenty feet high—of the old Rhododendron arboreum, which is now covered with innumerable traces of deep blood-red flowers, realising all that the late Dr Wallick ever wrote of the glorious effect produced on the northern slopes of the Himalayas, where vast tracks are entirely covered with them. An Ingenious Calculation.—A correspondent of the “ Photographic News” sends the following arithmetical curiosity :—Starting with the hands of a clock at Oh. Om. Os, the minute hand, during one hour, passes over the several numbers 1,2, 3, to 12, these, being added together make the sum of 78, which being multiplied by 24, the number of hours in the sidereal day, makes the number 1872, or the date of next year. Of course this has never happened before in the Christian era, and never can happen again.