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damaged for age. I also went about in this place to look for 

 some young ones but could find none at all." In 1655, 

 Thevenot said that there were twenty-three trees, and a half cen- 

 tury later a reliable witness writes of the cedars, " Here are some 

 very old and of prodigious bulk, and others younger and of a 

 smaller size. Of the former, I could reckon up only sixteen, 

 the latter are very numerous." 



In 1722, La Roque tells us that the largest of the trees had a 

 trunk nineteen feet in circumference and a head one hundred and 

 twenty feet in circumference. In 1 744, Pocoke says there are 

 "fifteen large ones and a great number of young cedars." In 

 1829, Pariset writes, "There are not above a dozen large trees, 

 but there maybe 400-500 small ones," and in 1832, there is 

 a note of pathos in Lamartine's simple statement, " There are now 

 but seven large trees." 



In the autumn of i860, J. D. Hooker visited the famous trees 

 and in the November number of the Natw'al History Revieiv of 

 the year 1862, gives a fuller account of them than his predeces- 

 sors. In this article, we read that on the side of the mountain, 

 the cedars " appear as a black speck in the great area of corry 

 and its moraines, which contain no other arboreous vegetation, 

 nor any shrubs, but a few small berberry and rose bushes, that 

 form no feature in the landscape. The number of the trees is 

 about four hundred ; they form a single group about four hun- 

 dred yards in diameter with one or two outstanding trees not far 

 from the rest. They are disposed in nine groups corresponding 

 to as many hummocks of the moraine on which they occur." 

 With regard to number. Hooker says that there were only fifteen 

 trees above fifteen feet in girth and only two others above twelve 

 feet. As to size, they varied from eighteen inches to forty feet 

 in girth. He himself says that it is a significant fact that there 

 was no tree of less than eighteen inches girth, not even seed- 

 lings of a second year's growth. 



The above records seem to indicate that conditions favorable 

 for the germination and growth of new trees come only at long 

 intervals in this isolated valley on the side of Mount Lebanon. 

 What the conditions are that govern the increase of population 



