607 A. E. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 195 
size. In the letters of Governor Roger Wood, about 1633, he stated 
that he had sent to his English friends cedar planks 30 and 32 inches 
wide and 12 to 13 feet long. These were sawed by hand, and indi- 
cate trees much larger than any now existing. Logs of cedar, five 
feet in diameter, are sometimes found, it is said, in the peat-bogs of 
the islands. One of the oldest cedars on the islands stands in the 
churchyard, by the side of the old abandoned Devonshire church. 
It is about five feet in diameter and much decayed.* Only two 
others as large are known. Some of the largest and finest trees on 
the islands are known to be about 200 years old. Those by Pem- 
broke churchyard were set out in 1717.+ 
Several fine cedars standing in a group near the new Devonshire 
church were preserved from destruction some thirty-five years ago 
by the Hon. J. H. Darrel, who bought the land and presented it to 
the parish, with the stipulation that these cedars should never be cut 
down. He deserves to be held in perpetual memory for this wise 
and generous act. Many other fine cedars also grow in that vicinity. 
Many of the finest cedars along the roadsides and in private 
grounds are not over forty to sixty years old. I was shown many 
tall ones, now from ten to twelve or more inches in diameter, that 
were planted only about forty years ago by the present proprietors, 
showing the rapidity of their growth in good soil. Indeed, it is said 
that they sometimes make good sized trees in twenty years. 
For more than half a century past, and up to the present time, the 
cedars do not seem to have decreased in number. They may, indeed, 
have increased considerably within the past fifty or sixty years. 
This is due partly to the greater care taken to preserve them in 
many places, especially on government lands, and to the replanting 
of them m some places, but probably, in a greater degree, to the 
* This tree is well figured in the ‘‘Garden and Forest,” vol. iv, p. 294, 1891. 
A specimen of a large cedar growing in a marsh is also figured on p. 295. The 
old Devonshire cecar is also figured in Stark’s Bermuda Guide, p. 122, 1897. 
Its age is unknown. 
+ The following record appears in the Register of the Pembroke Parish: ‘‘ Be 
it Remembered yt upon th 24 day of Oct. 1717 the double row of cedars was 
planted round the Church in Pembroke Tribe all within the bounds of the 
church yard, and the 7th of November following the rafters were raised upon 
the new church.” 
Many of these trees are said to be still standing, and are of larger size than 
most of the cedars now living. .When very old the cedars are often decayed at 
the heart. The earliest settlers complained of the inconvenience of this in ship 
building. 3 
