14^ Cedars 



(Sub-tribe LARICE^ — continued) 

 Section CEDARS 



In the midst 

 A cedar spread his d,ark-green layers of shade, 



Tennyson, Gardener's Daughter. 



If trees were adjudged upon their appearances and 

 divided into two classes, pretty and majestic, the 

 Cedar of Lebanon would pre-eminently find its place 

 in the ranks of the latter. 



It is a tree that has been written of by poets and 

 writers, of all ages, in many countries. It has been 

 sung of in David's Psalms and Bible verse. A halo 

 of sacred association surrounds its patriarchal head. 

 It is a tree that was regarded by Biblical writers as 

 an emblem of strength, and the look of the tree as it 

 is presented to us, with its short thick trunk, its 

 massive branches breaking out from it like muscular 

 arms, suggests the sculptured strength of the statue 

 known as the Farnese Hercules rather than the figure, 

 with its more graceful and slimmer lines, of the 

 Apollo Belvedere. 



While the branches of most trees spring from the 

 trunk, in the case of the Cedar, as in the Oak, they 

 seem rather to divide from the trunk and carry 

 away with them some of its substance. Both Oaks 

 and Cedars, with their fortes ramos (stout branches), 

 and ingentem umbram (expansive spread), fulfil the 

 Virgilian idea of mightiness in forest trees. 



** The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars of 

 Lebanon," so wrote Isaiah, and his expressions and 

 figures of speech concede to it the strongest power 

 chat imagination and illustration at that day could 

 offer. 



The prophet priest and Jewish exile in Chaldaean 

 land, Ezekiel, describes it as a tree " with shadowing 



