1885.] HISTORICAL NOTICE OF CELEBRATED TREES. 171 



wood, so that it seems to be proof against time itself. The timber 

 in tlie Temple of Apollo at Utica was found undecayed after a lapse 

 of two thousand years, and a beam in the oratory of Diana at 

 Seguntum in Spain was fetched fr(jm Zante two centuries before the 

 Trojan war. Some of the most celebrated erections of antiquit}- 

 were constructed of this tree. "Solomon raised a levy of 30,000 

 men out of all Israel, and he sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 a 

 month, by courses, and he had threescore and ten thousand that bore 

 burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains. And 

 he covered the temple with beams and boards of cedar ; and he 

 built chambers against it which rested on the house, with timber of 

 cedar." The sacred historian also mentions that the same monarch 

 had a palace of cedar in the forest of Lebanon. ^Vncient writers 

 tell us that the ships of Sesostris the Egyptian conqueror, one of 

 which was 280 cubits long, were formed of this timber, as was also 

 the gigantic statue of Diana in the temple of Ephesus. 



There is, however, some doubt about the ancient history of this 

 tree, as other plants were also named cedars ; thus the Deodar pine, 

 which grows on the elevated range of the Himalayas, and much used 

 throughout India, seems to have been the plant intended in several 

 instances by even the sacred historians. The cedar mentioned by 

 Horace appears to have been a cypress ; and even in modern times 

 several kinds of juniper from North America are termed cedars, one 

 of which {Juniferus Virrjinium) yields the wood commonly employed 

 for pencils. The true cedar, though not a lofty, is a very noble 

 tree. Whether, however, those on Mount Lebanon were thinned to 

 exhaustion by the axes of the king of Israel, or whether they have 

 decayed in consequence of some variation of climate or other physical 

 cause, it is difficult to say, but at the present day very few old ones 

 exist. The celebrated grove near the summit of Mount Lebanon 

 was first described in modern times by Belon, who visited it in the 

 year 1550. The situation of the place may be marked by its 

 vicinity to the village of Bsherreh, which stands about three miles to 

 the west, on a spot a little less elevated. The village of Ehden and 

 that of Kanobin are also in the neighbourhood, though more distant 

 than Bsherreh, the one to the north of the cedars, the other to the 

 north-west. The trees have been always venerated by the Maronite 

 Christians, who firmly believed them to have been coeval with 

 Solomon, if not planted with his own hands, and when Belon was 

 there, they made an annual pilgrimage to the spot, at the festival of 

 the transfiguration, the Patriarch, who resided at Kanobin, cele- 

 brating high mass under one of the oldest cedars, and very properly 

 anathematizing all who should presume to injure them ; this is 

 generally known by the name of the feast of the cedars. Various 



