236 THE CEDAR. 
age. Travellers formerly counted thirty or forty ; more re- 
cently, seventeen ; more recently still, only twelve. There are 
now but seven. These, however, from their size and general 
appearance, may be fairly presumed to have existed in Biblical 
times. Around these ancient witnesses of ages long since 
past, there still remains a little grove of yellower cedars, ap- 
pearing to me to form a group of from 400 to 500 trees.” In 
September 1836, M. Laure, an officer in the French Marine, 
in company with Prince de Joinville, visited Mount Lebanon, 
and ascended to the cedars, which stand on an almost level 
space or plain, entirely surrounded by the steep peaks of the 
mountain. They found fifteen of the sixteen old cedars men- 
tioned by Maundrell ; but all more or less in a state of decay. 
One of the healthiest of the old trees, but perhaps the smallest, 
measured 35 feet 9 inches in circumference. All the trees 
are much furrowed by lightning, which seems to strike them 
more or less every year. Surrounded by the old trees, are 
about forty comparatively young trees, the smallest of which 
have trunks from ten to twelve feet in circumference. They 
add that there was not one young plant of cedar in all the 
wood of El-Herze, and that the soil of the forest of Lebanon, 
on which there was not a single blade of grass growing in 
September 1836, is covered to the thickness of half-a-foot 
with the fallen leaves, cones, and scales of the cedar, so that it 
is almost impossible for the seeds of the trees to reach the 
ground and germinate. 
The cedar was introduced into England after the middle of 
the seventeenth century; and here it still possesses much of 
that grandeur and majesty for which the tree is so celebrated. 
At Claremont, in the neighbourhood of London, it stands 100 
feet high, with a bole of 5 feet 6 inches in diameter. The 
loftiest cedar in England is supposed to be one at Strath- 
fieldsaye. It is 108 feet high, with a trunk upwards of 
3 feet, and a head 74 feet in diameter. But perhaps the 
largest, as well as the handsomest, specimen in Britain, is a 
tree at Sion House, about 80 feet high, with a trunk 8 feet in 
diameter at three feet from the ground, and a-head 117 feet 
