THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 101 



branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stat- 

 ure ; and his top was among the thick boughs. . . . Thus was 

 he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches ; for 

 his root was by great waters. The Cedars in the garden of 

 God could not hide him ; the Fir-trees were not like his 

 boughs, and the Chestnut-trees were not like his branches ; 

 nor any tree in the garden of God like unto him in beauty." 

 (Ezekiel, xxxi. 3, 7, 8.) 



The celebrated grove near the summit of Mount Lebanon, 

 to which there are particular allusions in Holy Writ, was first 

 described in modern times by Belon, who visited it about the 

 year 1550. The majestic old Cedars of this grove — at that 

 time the sole, as they are still the finest, known representatives 

 of the species — were then, as now, venerated by the Maro- 

 nite Christians, who firmly believed them to have been coeval 

 with Solomon, if not planted by his own hands, and made an 

 annual pilgrimage to the spot, at the festival of the Trans- 

 figuration ; the Patriarch celebrating high mass under one of 

 the oldest Cedars, and very properly anathematizing all who 

 should presume to injure them. The larger trees were de- 

 scribed and measured by Rauwolf, an early German trav- 

 eler, in 1574 ; by Thevenot, in 1655 ; and more particularly 

 by Maundrell, in 1696 ; by La Koque, in 1722 ; by Dr. Po- 

 cocke, in 1744, and by Labillardiere, in 1787 ; since which 

 time, De Candolle states, that all the older trees have been 

 destroyed. But we have not been able to find the author- 

 ity for this statement, and have reason to doubt its correct- 

 ness. Although the number of large trees has diminished in 

 every succeeding age, yet several recent visitors mention a 

 few large trunks of equal size with those described by the 

 earlier travelers. Indeed, M. Laure, an officer of the French 

 Marine, who with the Prince de Joinville visited Mount 

 Lebanon in the autumn of 1836, says, that all but one of the 

 sixteen old Cedars mentioned by Maundrell are still alive, 

 although in a decaying state ; and that one of the healthiest, 

 but perhaps the smallest trunks, measured thirty-three French 

 feet, or about thirty-six English feet, in circumference, which, 

 by the way, is nearly the girth of the largest that Maundrell 



