170 GiLPm's roiiKST sgeneet. 



close to each other, to bind thera tight at proper 

 distances with pitched ropes and collars of iron. 

 But a very noble Fir was lately brought into 

 England, which was not spliced in the common 

 mode, but was converted, in its full dimensions, 

 into the bowsprit of the ' Britannia,' a new ship 

 of one hundred and ten guns, in which capacity, 

 I have heard, it serves at present. This Fir was 

 ninety-six feet in length, and had, I believe, the 

 full diameter of Tiberius' s Larch. 



Maundrel tells us that when he travelled into 

 the East, a few of the old Cedars of Lebanon were 

 still left. He found them among the snow, near 

 the highest part of the mountain. ' I measured 

 one of the largest of them,' says he, ' and found 

 it twelve yards six inches in girt, and yet sound, 

 and thirty-seven yards in the spread of its boughs. 

 At about five or six yards from the ground it 

 divided into five limbs, each of which was a massy 

 tree.' 



A later traveller. Van Egmont, who visited the 

 scenes of Mount Lebanon, seems also to speak of 

 the same trees wbich Maundrel mentions. He 

 observed them, he says,, to be of very different 



