ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS. 91 



Lebanon, and Mount Atlas — all three mountainous, and 

 all three separated by immense plains and deserts? It 

 is true that cyclones may have carried the seeds to 

 immense distances ; especially when we consider that the 

 cedar seeds, like those of many conifer?e, are winged. 

 But not improbably the sacrcdness of the Himalayan 

 Deodar may have had a good deal to do with its dis- 

 semination through the migrations of Jiian. 



Lenormant, as already stated, has sufficiently shown 

 that the Assyrians held this tree, its wood and its 

 cones in great veneration, and therefore its dissemination 

 would be sufficiently explained by human migrations 

 from the Himalayan regions, where it was indigenous, 

 towards westerly directions, the migrants taking the 

 cones with them as charms against illness, etc. The 

 migrants, in their course westwards, would have occupied 

 both the plains and the mountains ; but as the Deodar 

 does not live in the plains in hot climates, it thrived 

 only on the mountains of Lebanon and Atlas, where it 

 has remained ; and now it has been discovered on the 

 mountains of Cyprus also. 



One of the sacred trees, that given in fig. 25, I have 

 supposed to have been some sort of fir tree, judging 

 from its symmetry and cones. Its pendulous branches 

 may well have been meant to represent the pendulous 

 and graceful branches of a young Deodar. When I say 

 young, it may be a tree forty or fifty years old, for 



