532 CONIFERS. 



parts where it is now ascertained to be a native. As to 

 the slow rate of growth, which, by many, is erroneously 

 attributed to the Cedar, this applies to it only at a very 

 early age, or for the first six or eight years, and even dur- 

 ing this period it is not slower than that of the silver and 

 some other firs. Planted under favourable circumstances, 

 and once fairly established in the ground, its growth has, 

 in many cases, proved to be greater than that of most other 

 resinous trees : thus Loudon remarks, that at Whitton neither 

 the pinaster, the Scotch pine, the silver fir, nor the larch, 

 though planted in the same soil and situation, had, at a 

 certain age, made so much timber as the Cedar, two of 

 which trees, in 1837, then one hundred and five years old, 

 were upwards of seventy feet high, with trunks fourteen 

 feet six inches in circumference at two feet from the 

 ground. The growth of the old Cedars in the Chelsea 

 Garden also, appears to have been very rapid during the 

 first eighty-three years, as, at that age, two of them girted 

 twelve feet six inches each, at two feet from the ground ; 

 but this rapid increase was soon after checked by the 

 draining of a pond near which they stood, and into which 

 their roots extended. 



Other instances of the rapid growth of the Cedar are 

 mentioned by Loudon ; one, where a tree forty years old 

 had reached a height of fifty feet with a diameter of bole 

 of three feet six inches ; another, where trees only twenty 

 years old were thirty-six feet high, with trunks which girt- 

 ed four feet six inches at three feet from the ground. Our 

 own observations, and the advance of some Cedars we 

 possess, are confirmatory of Loudon's observation, that the 

 growth of the Cedar, when planted in favourable situations 

 and good soil, is nearly as rapid as that of the larch, at 

 least, such we believe to be the case after its roots are 

 once fairly established in the ground. 



