1885.] HISTORICAL NOTICE OF CELEBRATED TREES. 173 



that we had ever seen. There are in this chimp two generations of 

 trees ; the oldest are large and massy, rearing their heads to an 

 enormous height, and spreading their branches afar. We measured 

 one of them, which we afterwards saw was not the largest in the 

 clump, and fomid it 32 feet in circumference. Seven of these 

 trees have a peculiarly ancient appearance ; the rest are younger, 

 but equally tall, tliough for want of space their branches are not so 

 spreading, yet the spectator views them with an elevation and 

 warmth of heart, and feels as if he were introduced to the venerable 

 descendants of an illustrious family, who, tired with the persecution 

 and assaults of fortune, had taken up their abode in this sequestered 

 and sunny spot, which tliey hallow by their presence, where they 

 grow nncontaminated, and look with a lordly pre-eminence over the 

 ground, which in better days their ancestors called their own. The 

 clump is so small that a person may walk round it in lialf an hour. 

 The old cedars are not found in any other part of Lebanon. Young 

 trees are occasionally met with ; they are very productive, and cast 

 many seeds annually." It would thus appear that older travellers 

 counted every tree they saw, both young and old, without distin- 

 guishing them, while those of the present day take notice of from 

 seven to twelve as enormously large, while others are smaller. 

 There is therefore no discrepancy between the different accounts, nor 

 anything to lead us to suppose that their number is diminishing ; 

 while, on the contrary, by including all the younger ones seen by 

 Burckhardt, they have very considerably increased. According to 

 Binot, some of them rose to the height of 60, 80, or even 100 feet. 

 Gabriel Sionita says that five men together could scarcely fathom 

 tlie trunk of one ; and Maundrell, about one hundred and fifty years 

 ago, found one of the largest, then quite sound, to measure 36 feet 

 6 inches in girth, or 11|- feet in diameter. The largest seen by 

 Labillardiere in 1787 was little more than 9 feet in diameter. M. 

 Laure, an officer in the French navy, who visited Mount Lebanon in 

 1836, and who, I may here state, affirms that fifteen out of the sixteen 

 old cedars mentioned by JMaundrell are still alive, although decaying, — 

 M. Laure mentions that one of the healthiest, but perhaps the smallest 

 trunks, measured 33 French feet, or about 36 English feet in 

 circumference, not very different from the dimensions of the largest 

 given by Maundrell. Now the girth of these large trees being 

 known, and the average rate of growth of younger plants being 

 ascertained, a highly probable estimate of their age may be formed. 

 In this country the tree thrives well, and probably there are many 

 more now in England than, including the young ones, on all Mount 

 Lebanon. Of those planted in the Eoyal Gardens at Chelsea in 

 1683, two had in eighty-three years acquired a circumference of 



