Dec. 1848. DEODAR AND CEDAR OF LEBANON. 257 



The cones of the Deodar are identical with those of the 

 Cedar of Lebanon : the Deodar has, generally longer and 

 more pale bluish leaves and weeping branches,* but 

 these characters seem to be unusually developed in our 

 gardens ; for several gentlemen, well acquainted with the 

 Deodar at Simla, when asked to point it out in the Kew 

 Gardens, have indicated the Cedar of Lebanon, and when 

 shown the Deodar, declare that they never saw that plant 

 in the Himalaya ! 



At the bottom of the valley we turned up the stream, 

 and passing the Tassichooding convents f and temple, 

 crossed the river — which was a furious torrent, about twelve 

 yards wide — to the village of Kambachen, on a flat terrace 

 a few feet above the stream. There were about a dozen 

 houses of wood, plastered with mud and dung, scattered 

 over a grassy plain of a few acres, fenced in, as were also a 

 few fields, with stone dykes. The only cultivation consists 

 of radishes, potatos, and barley : no wheat is grown, the 

 climate being said to be too cold for it, by which is pro- 

 bably meant that it is foggy, — the elevation (11,380 feet) 



* Since writing the above, I have seen, in the magnificent Pinetum at Dropmore, 

 noble cedars, with the length and hue of leaf, and the pensile branches of the 

 Deodar, and far more beautiful than that is, and as unlike the common 

 Lebanon Cedar as possible. When it is considered from how very few wild trees 

 (and these said to be exactly alike) the many dissimilar varieties of the C. Libani 

 have been derived ; the probability of this, the Cedar of Algiers, and of the 

 Himalayas (Deodar) being all forms of one species, is greatly increased. We 

 cannot presume to judge from the few cedars which still remain, what the 

 habit and appearance of the tree may have been, when it covered the slopes of 

 Libanus, and seeing how very variable Coniferce are in habit, we may assume 

 that its surviving specimens give us no information on this head. Should all 

 three prove one, it will materially enlarge our ideas of the distribution and 

 variation of species. The botanist will insist that the typical form of cedar is 

 that which retains its characters best over the greatest area, namely, the Deodar; 

 in which case the prejudice of the ignorant, and the preconceived ideas of the 

 naturalist, must yield to the fact that the old familiar Cedar of Lebanon is an 

 unusual variety of the Himalayan Deodar. 



t These were built by the Sikkim people, when the eastern valleys of Nepal 

 belonged to the Sikkim rajah. 



