34 THE APOTHECARIES' GARDEN 



1903. Many times they must have been 

 sketched. 1 An engraving of them is to be 

 seen in Johns' Forest Trees of Britain the 

 Revd. C. A. Johns, who was Kingsley's tutor, 

 and inspired him, as his books have many 

 others, with a love of nature. 



These Chelsea cedars, as they grew, must 

 have been watched with the greatest interest 

 no cedars had been seen in England before, 

 though every child had heard of the wonderful 

 trees. Gerard's Herball must have been con- 

 sulted. 



This is his description : " The great cedar 

 of Libanus is a very big and high tree, not 

 only exceeding all other resinous trees, but 

 in its tallnesse and largenesse far surmount- 

 ing all other trees ... in shape like a 

 sharp-pointed steeple." 



Londoners must have thought that their 

 great-grandchildren might see trees like Salis- 

 bury spire towering over houses in Paradise 

 Row. 



The full height of a well-grown cedar is said 

 not to exceed 80 feet. Still, on its native 

 mountains of the Lebanon, there must be a 

 grandeur in the old cedars far surpassing that of 

 the cedars of the Atlas. The wide-spreading 

 flat boughs, dense and dark green, must be 

 more impressive than the comparatively thin, 

 pale, scattered foliage of the Algerian cedar. 

 Many of the best trees, too, when the writer 

 happened to see something of the Algerian 



1 There are good photographs of the survivor in History of 

 Gardening in England, by Hon. Mrs. Eustace Cecil (Hon. Lady 

 Cecil) and in Chelsea Peach, by Reginald Blunt. 



