THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 109 



approach them, we feel as if we were unworthy to 

 touch them, so great in comparison with our little 

 lives are the associations that crowd around these ven- 

 erable giants. 



" These trees are the most celebrated natural mon- 

 uments in the world," says Lamartine, who visited 

 them in 1833. " They have been alike consecrated by 

 religion, poetry and history. The Scriptures celebrate 

 them in many a passage, and they supplied the im- 

 ages which the poets delighted to use. Solomon wished 

 to employ them in the building of the Temple, no 

 doubt because of the magnificence and the sacred 

 character of these trees even at this early epoch." The 

 Arabs of all sects have a traditional veneration for 

 these trees. They attribute to them not only a vege- 

 tative force, which enables them to live forever, but 

 also a soul which imparts to them the power to man- 

 ifest signs of consciousness and an understanding sim- 

 ilar to the instinct of animals and the intelligence of 

 man. They have a premonition of the seasons ; they 

 move their huge branches like limbs stretch them 

 out and draw them in, raise them toward heaven or 

 bend them toward the earth. In the Arab mind they 

 are divine beings in the form of trees. They grow 

 nowhere else but on the table-lands of the Lebanon, 

 taking root high above the region where all other 

 great plants cease to thrive. 



The number of these trees diminishes in each suc- 

 ceeding age. In 1550, Bellon counted thirty of them ; 

 in 1600, there were only twenty-four ; in 1650, twen- 

 ty-two ; in 1700, sixteen ; in 1800, seven. These sev- 



