The Cedar. 479 



Being an old angler, I have made acquaintance with most of the 

 rapid streams in Great Britain and part of Ireland ; and with all the 

 appliances at hand to make these effective, cheaply constructed 

 jetties I have been surprised to find so little done on this principle 

 of arresting and utilizing the scour of the stream, instead of merely 

 attempting to divert the current. In almost all such cases as I refer 

 to the great bulk of the material can be carted or harrowed at low 

 water from the bed of the river; and in most cases trees can be 

 lopped (if no fall is going on) of such branches as are required, without 

 material harm being done to them. An immense amount of damage 

 is done by not keeping clear the natural bed of the stream. If water 

 is displaced therefrom it must of course impinge with greater force 

 upon the banks ; yet what is more common than to see an old root 

 or a broken bough suffered to remain in mid-stream, gathering silt, 

 and, in the very way I have described, forming an impediment 

 capable of resisting the fiercest floods ? 



The Cedar. 



The Cedar, with its beautiful spreading boughs and dark green foliage, 

 is really a grand tree, and was the noblest of all the trees in Palestine. 

 It is often used in Scripture as a type of magnificence and power : " The 

 righteous shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon." The timber Avas used 

 by David in building the king's house. Solomon esteemed cedar as 

 the most valuable product of the vegetable kingdom, and hyssop the 

 least. " Hew me/' says Solomon in a letter to Hiram, " cedars out of 

 Lebanon ; . . for thou knowest that there is not among us any that 

 can hew timber like unto the Sidonians." In those days the Israelites 

 were agriculturists, and the Tyrians were skilled in cutting timber and 

 in architecture. The goddess of Ephesus was a statue made of cedar- 

 wood. But of the famous forest of Lebanon we are told by Belloni, 

 who visited it in 1516, that only 28 trees remained, and Eawloff in 1575 

 saw only 24. Daudini in 1600 saw 23. IMaundrill in 1G96 saw only 15 

 standing and one blown dcwn. Peacocke in 17;38 saw 16. Burck- 

 hardt in 1810 saw 11, and Ilichardson in 1818 found only 7 trees. 

 Maundrill gives some dimensions of those he saw, one was 12 yards 

 in girth and 37 yards in spread of the boughs. Cortes, the conqueror 

 of Mexico, according to Herrera, built a palace in which were 7,000 

 beams of cedarwood, mostly 120 feet long by 12 feet circumference. 

 The wood emits an oil which destroys moths, and its sawdust has 

 strong antiseptic properties. In some of the Eastern countries 

 Cedrus deodar is still worshipped ; hence, as some suppose, the^name 

 " God I ador." Cedar was introduced to this country about 168.3.— 

 Jotting from Lorn Fitt'^< Scrap-hook. 



