CHAPTER III. 

 THE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 



" As for the stork, the fir-trees are her house." PSALM civ. 17. 



VERY remarkable was the feeling with which the 

 ancient poets of Israel regarded the cedars of 

 Lebanon ; a feeling which has survived in the worship 

 which the Maronite priests celebrate annually under 

 their shade during the Feast of the Transfiguration. 

 For long ages these venerable trees clothed the slopes 

 and valleys of the great Syrian range ; and with their 

 roots planted in old glacial moraines, they bore witness 

 regarding the amazing luxuriance and abundance of 

 the pines of the far-off Miocene world, and still car- 

 ried out their important uses in the economy of nature. 

 The Psalmist, whose keen eye even for the humblest 

 objects is strikingly seen in the great hymn of nature 

 set to the music of the spheres the io4th Psalm was 

 struck with the wide hospitality which they afforded. 

 The grove of belated cedars the last survivors of a 

 most hospitable old race in its retired nook on the 

 north-western slope of Lebanon attracted the mi- 



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