THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 101 
branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stat- 
ure; and his top was among the thick boughs. . . . Thus was 
he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches ; for 
his root was by great waters. The Cedars in the garden of 
God could not hide him; the Fir-trees were not like his 
boughs, and the Chestnut-trees were not like his branches ; 
nor any tree in the garden of God like unto him in beauty.” 
(Ezekiel, xxxi. 3, T, 8.) 
The celebrated grove near the summit of Mount Lebanon, 
to which there are particular allusions in Holy Writ, was first 
described in modern times by Belon, who visited it about the 
year 1550. The majestic old Cedars of this grove — at that 
time the sole, as they are still the finest, known representatives 
of the species — were then, as now, venerated by the Maro- 
nite Christians, who firmly believed them to have been coeval 
with Solomon, if not planted by his own hands, and made an 
annual pilgrimage to the spot, at the festival of the Trans- 
figuration ; the Patriarch celebrating high mass under one of 
the oldest Cedars, and very properly anathematizing all who 
should presume to injure them. The larger trees were de- 
scribed and measured by Rauwolf, an early German trav- 
eler, in 1574; by Thevenot, in 1655; and more particularly 
by Maundrell, in 1696; by La Roque, in 1722; by Dr. Po- 
cocke, in 1744, and by Labillardiére, in 1787; since which 
time, De Candolle states, that all the older trees have been 
destroyed. But we have not been able to find the author- 
ity for this statement, and have reason to doubt its correct- 
ness. Although the number of large trees has diminished in 
every succeeding age, yet several recent visitors mention a 
few large trunks of equal size with those described by the 
earlier travelers. Indeed, M. Laure, an officer of the French 
Marine, who with the Prince de Joinville visited Mount 
Lebanon in the autumn of 1836, says, that all but one of the 
sixteen old Cedars mentioned by Maundrell are still alive, 
although in a decaying state; and that one of the healthiest, 
but perhaps the smallest trunks, measured thirty-three French 
feet, or about thirty-six English feet, in circumference, which, 
by the way, is nearly the girth of the largest that Maundrell 
