Cedrus 455 
though so widely disconnected from the Taurus forest, can be regarded in no other 
light than as an outlying member of the latter. After speaking of the Algerian 
cedar and the deodar, Sir Joseph says that it is evident that the distinctions 
between them are so trivial, and so far within the proved limits of variation in 
coniferous plants, that it may reasonably be assumed that all originally sprang from 
one. There are no other distinctions whatever between them of bark, wood, leaves, 
male cones, anthers, or in their mode of germination, growth, or hardiness (but this 
has not been confirmed during the severe winters of a later date in England). 
Though the difference in the shape of the scales and seeds of Deodara and Libani 
are very marked, they vary much, many forms of each overlap, and further 
transitions between the most dissimilar may be established by the _ inter- 
calation of seeds and scales from C. atlantica. Sir Joseph accounts for the 
difference in the habit of the three forms in a great measure by the climate of 
the three localities: the most sparse, weeping, long-leaved cedar is from the 
most humid region, the Himalaya; whilst a¢/antica, the form of most rigid habit, 
corresponds with the climate of the country under the influence of the great 
Sahara desert. No course remains, then, but to regard all as species, or all as 
varieties, or Deodara and atlantica as varieties of one species, and Lzdanz as 
another. The hitherto adopted and only alternative of regarding Lzdani and 
atlantica as varieties of one species and Deodara as another species must be given up. 
Ravenscroft, in Pinetum Britannicum, gives a very full account of the cedars of 
Lebanon from various sources, with four good illustrations from photographs taken 
by F. M. Good of Winchfield, and there are many points in his account worth 
referring to. 
Mr. Ridgway of Fairlawn, who visited them in 1862, says’ that there is a young 
tree 50 yards west of the chapel, of exactly the same form and habit as a deodar in 
his park near Tonbridge. It has the same graceful drooping habit, the same light 
silvery green, and none of the usual rigid horizontal form of the cedar. He says the 
remainder of the race of trees vary from 20 to 25 feet in girth; some are as tall and 
straight as poplars, some not above 20 feet high, and gnarled and stunted. Ravens- 
croft gives in a table the facts relating to the number of trees found in the accounts 
of various authors who have written on the Cedars of Lebanon, commencing with 
Belon in 1550 and ending with Canon Tristram in 1864. Of the older ones there 
were 28 in Belon’s time, which are now reduced to about half that number. There is 
a gap of some centuries—Ravenscroft says probably more than 1000 years—between 
the cedars of the second size and the older ones, and again a very long interval of 
growth between all the young trees, which are now about 4oo. I do not find any 
reliable information, taken from an actual count of the number of rings in any of the 
old Cedars of Lebanon, as to what their possible age may be. Ravenscroft has gone 
very carefully into the question of the age of the Cedars of Lebanon, which, he says, 
may be from 4000 to 5000 years old; and he further gives a table based on 200 
measurements of cedars of all ages in England, which shows that the average 
growth in height in England is about 1 foot per annum for trees up to sixty years 
1 Gard. Chron. 1862, p. 572. 
