60 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



Syrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches, 

 and of an high stature; and his top was among the 

 thick boughs. His "boughs were multiplied, and his 

 branches became long. The fir trees were not like 

 his boughs, nor the chesnut trees like his branches; 

 nor any tree in the garden of God like unto him in 

 beauty." 



Whether the cedars of Lebanon were thinned to 

 exhaustion by the fourscore thousand axes of the 

 King of Israel, or whether they have decayed in 

 consequence of some variation of climate, or other 

 physical change in the country, it is impossible to 

 say; but modern travellers represent that very few 

 now exist, though some are of immense bulk about 

 thirty-six feet in circumference, and quite undecayed. 

 The cedar of Lebanon, though it has been intro- 

 duced into many parts of England as an ornamental 

 tree, and has thriven well, has not yet been planted 

 in great numbers for the sake of its timber. No 

 doubt it is more difficult to rear, and requires a far 

 richer soil than the pine and the larch; but the prin- 

 cipal objection to it has been the supposed great 

 slowness of its growth, although that does not appear 

 to be very much greater than in the oak. Some 

 cedars, which have been planted in a soil well 

 adapted to them, at Lord Carnarvon's, at Highclere, 

 have grown with extraordinary rapidity. Of the 

 cedars planted in the royal garden at Chelsea, in 

 1683, two had, in eighty-three years, acquired a 

 circumference of more than twelve feet, at two feet 

 from the ground, while their branches extended over 

 a circular space forty feet in diameter. Seven-and- 

 twenty years afterwards the trunk of the largest one 

 had increased more than half a foot in circumference ; 

 which is probably more than most oaks of a similar 

 age would do during an equal period. The surface 

 soil in which the Chelsea cedars throve so well is 



