THE PINE. 51 



There is an impression with some people that the 

 ark was built of cedar- wood, since the consonants 

 in the name gopher bear some resemblance. But 

 this is altogether hypothetical : what " gopher " was 

 seems quite past finding out. The cedars of Lebanon, 

 it may be added, are not, as has often been thought, 

 nearly extinct. There is a pathetic account, in 

 certain books, of only 28 being found in the middle 

 of the 16th century ; only 22 a hundred years later; 

 in 1737, only 15; in 1810 only 12; and in 1818 

 only seven ! The writer admits, however, that 

 there were always " plenty of young ones," the 

 above figures referring only to the patriarchs ; and 

 now it appears, from recent explorations, that the 

 tree is still plentiful, though not exactly upon 

 Lebanon. 



There is something very grand, again, in the con- 

 templation of the vast age attained by conifers, the 

 ordinary minimum being two or three centuries. 

 That is to say, two or three centuries constitute 

 their potential lease of life, which they will exhaust, 

 if not prematurely destroyed either by accident 

 or for the purposes of human enterprise and need. 

 Many species live to be seven or eight hundred 

 years old, and the colossal Wellingtonias of Cali- 

 fornia are estimated to reach nearly 2000. In the 

 Crystal Palace at Sydenham, up to the time of the 

 disastrous fire, December 30th, 1866, stood the 

 bark of the lower portion of the trunk of one of 



E 2 



