152 CEDARS 



in question. Even in Holy Writ the word " cedar" 

 is used to denote other trees — to wit, probably the 

 P. Halepensis, the Aleppo or Jerusalem Pine, and the 

 Juniperus Excelsa. But even in the latter days the 

 Cypresses, Thuyas, Junipers, and Sequoias have all 

 in turn and at times masqueraded under the shelter 

 of its name, and out west in American and Canadian 

 lands we read of Red Cedars, White Cedars, Canoe 

 Cedars, Pencil Cedars, Incense Cedars, and I dare say 

 many more so-called Cedars, with many more de- 

 scriptive adjectives. Lumbermen and settlers out 

 there, like timber dealers and carpenters sometimes 

 at home, seem in sheer bravado to take unholy delight 

 in upsetting the conventional applications of nomen- 

 clature which scientists and botanists have prescribed, 

 with the rather direful result of making confusion 

 confounded in many a mind where light might other- 

 wise have dawned. 



As the muezzin from the minaret declares that 

 there is only one Prophet, so do we from our housetops 

 proclaim that there is only one family of true Cedars 

 in the meaning of the word to-day, and that the 

 Cedar from Lebanon, the African Cedar from regions 

 in reach of Sahara Desert air (C. Atlantica), and the 

 Indian Cedar (C. Deodara) from the humid Himalayas 

 in the Far East, are, they and they only, the nearly 

 related representatives of the true Cedar. 



To differentiate one from the other in these three 

 affinities never seems to present much difficulty to 

 the more casual observer. If any confusion is created 

 it is between an Atlantic and Lebanon clad with the 

 same coloured foliage. In their identification papers 

 they read much alike, the same number of leaves in 

 a tuft, much the same-sized cone, and the more 

 regular pubescence on the one (the C. Atlantica) — all 

 these are details that do not tell much to the more 

 unscrutinizing of tree-lovers. Shape must be the 



