12 OEIOINAL AETICLES. 



important, Buice it gives a totally different idea of the hardness of 

 cedar- wood from wliat English-grown specimens do. 



It is not my purjiose to offer anything beyond an outline of the 

 chief results we obtained; these will be given in detail elsewhere, 

 when the materials necessary for substantiating them have arrived 

 in England : they were certainly more novel and interesting than we 

 had ventured to hope for, and determined Captain Washington to 

 direct a detailed survey to be made of the whole head of the valley, 

 or basin, in which the Cedars grow ; this was executed by Captain 

 Mansell last summer, and is now on its way to England, accompanied 

 by sections of two of the youngest trees, which, as I shall have 

 occasion hereafter to show, are much more interesting scientifically, 

 than sections of the oldest would be. Tlie history of the Cedars of 

 Lebanon cannot, however, be isolated from that of their blood- 

 relations, the Cedars of Taurus, Algeria and India, which I shall 

 therefore also bring under notice in this sketch; regarding the 

 Lebanon plant as the tj^e of all, because it is in many respects 

 intermediate botanically, as it is geographically, betweeen the others. 



So far as is at present generally known, the Cedars are confined on 

 Lebanon to one spot, at the head of the Kedisha valley ; they have, 

 however, been found by Ehrenberg* in valleys to the northward of 

 this. The Kedisha valley, at 6000 feet elevation, terminates in broad, 

 shallow, flat-floored basins, and is 2 to 3 miles across, and as much long; 

 it is here in a straight line 15 miles from the sea, and about three or 

 four from the summit of Lebanon, which is to the northward of it. 

 These open basins have shelving sides, which rise 2 to 4000 feet above 

 then' bases ; they exactly resemble what are called Corrys in many high- 

 land mountains; the floor of that in which the Cedars grow presents 

 almost a dead level to the eye, crossed abruptly and transversely by a 

 confused range of ancient moraines, which have been deposited by 

 glaciers that, under very different conditions of climate, once filled 

 the basin above them, and commimicated with the perpetual snow wdth 

 Avhieh the whole summit of Lebanon was, at that time, deeply covered. 

 The moraines are perhaps 80 to 100 feet high ; their boundaries are 

 perfectly defined, and they divide the floor of the basin into an iipper 

 and lower flat area. The rills from the surrounding heights collect 

 on the upper flat, and form one stream, which winds amongst the 

 moraines on its way to the lower flat, whence it is precipitated 

 into the gorge of the Kedisha. The Cedars grow on that portion 

 of the moraine which immediately borders this stream, and nowhere 

 else; they form one group, about 400 yards in diameter, with anout- 



• When in S}Tia I was unable to obtain any information relative to the state- 

 ment contained in Murray's Handbook of Syria (i. 585), that Cedars grew in other 

 localities besides the Kedisha valley. Recently, however, I have inquired of my 

 friend Professor Ehrenberg (tlie autliority given for the statement), who informs me, 

 in a letter full of interesting matter relating to the Cedars, that he found many 

 trees in forests of Oak, &c., on the route from Bsherrc to Bshinnate. 



