BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 95 
“Your correspondent who says that the Deodar of the natives is not 
Cedrus Deodara, is partly right and partly wrong. The subject has 
been well elucidated by Madden, in a paper published in a semi- 
medical Journal, which you have probably not seen. Deodara means 
simply God-given, or the gift of God, and is applied to more than one 
tree; but in Kamaon (whence Roxburgh obtained the tree) as well as 
in Kashmir, only to Cedrus Deodara. At Simla, where your corres- 
pondent probably received his information, the Deodar is called Keli 
(Kelon, Royle, p. 350), and the sacred name, according to Madden, is 
given to Cupressus torulosa. At Massuri the tree is not found; that 
place being on the outermost range, to which apparently Cedrus 
Deodara never extends. In the valley of tht Chenab I found that the 
name Kel was that known to the people.” 
Travellers who have seen the Deodar in its wild and natural state, 
do not appear to be yet agreed as to its identity, or otherwise, with the 
Cedar of Lebanon. Untravelled botanists are not competent to decide ; 
because, in a young state, it is notorious how variable are the plants of the 
Pine tribe generally ; and perfect specimens of Deodar probably scarcely 
exist in Herbaria. In colour and aspect and ramification the Cedars 
of Lebanon, when large, do exhibit considerable discrepancies. Some 
have even considered the kind that grows on Mount Atlas different 
from the true Cedar of Lebanon; but that opinion does not seem 
to gain ground. If the Cedar extends from Mount Atlas in the west 
to Lebanon in Syria, and thence, according to authors, to the Mounts 
Amanus and Taurus; and if Ledebour received information of (though 
he did not see) a forest of Cedars at Tschetschulicha at an elevation of 
6,540 feet of elevation, in the Altai mountains, it brings us to no un- 
reasonable distance from the western portion of the Himalaya moun- 
tains, and to Ladakh, where Moorcroft speaks of two varieties of the 
Deodar growing, the one called Shinlik, the other Christa rooroo :— 
and we know that there is a great similarity between the vegetation of 
the Altai and the Himalaya. Our valued friend, Capt. Munro, who 
has been much among the Deodars of the latter country, expressed his 
opinion that the Deodar is not specifically distinct from the Cedar of 
Lebanon; and Dr. Thomas Thomson, in a former letter from Simla, 
thus writes :— 
* This place averages 7,500 feet above the level of the sea. The top 
