INCENSE C'EDAB. 19 



INCENSE CEDAR. 



(Liboeedrus Decurrens.) 



"Down in a vale, where lucid waters played, 

 And mountain cedars stretched their downward shade." 



— Sir Philip Sidney. 



THIS great Cedar of our coast and mountains is remark- 

 able for its super-eminent use, beauty, precision, and 

 aspiring grandeur. Devoted to the conic plan, few 

 diverted limbs ever spread afar to mar the general purpose — 

 elegant and upright in early life, it becomes at length grand 

 and dignified with age; is also eminently noted for great 

 rapidity of growth, wonderful lightness, stiffness, and extra- 

 ordinary durability ; in short, a thousand uses have sprung 

 up, and are multiplying around this interesting Cedar as 

 its most inestimable qualities become better known. For- 

 tunately for us, it is one of the most extensively distributed 

 trees of the Pacific — found from the coast range north, south 

 to San Diego, Sierra Nevada, Southern Oregon, and most of 

 the interior mountain region, from two thousand to four 

 thousand feet, and even thrives quite well at six thousand 

 six hundred feet altitude; and, so far as we have observed, 

 seems to give out at seven thousand — said to extend to eight 

 thousand five hundred (?). As usual with our sylva, flora, 

 and fauna, this also is found lowest along the coast where it 

 finds the requisite temperature, etc., with combined moist- 

 ure. The base and lower trunk somewhat resembles the 

 Western Juniper {J. Occidentalis) ; it is to be noted in gen- 

 eral that trees of such broad, outwardly sweeping, or ex- 

 panded bases seldom blow over, and to the perceptive and 

 artistic eye their significant expression is one of firmness 

 and stability; one hundred to two hundred feet high, six to 

 nine feet in diameter — rarely larger — the shaft often clear 

 of limbs eighty to one hundred feet, and although the lower 

 limbs, or even dry branches, may encumber the middle por- 

 tion, pin-knots do not damage the timber. As the massive 

 body tapers more rapidly above than redwood, and is less 

 eccentric than Juniper, nevertheless its general port reminds 

 one most of the best specimens of this latter; the light cin- 

 namon-bark is thick, of shreddy-fibered texture, but so con- 

 cretely compacted as to render the surface evenly ridged by 

 very long, big bars of bark ; these sweep obliquely down on 

 the long spiral twist of swift water lines, which gives it the 

 expression of deep, determined currents, and adds to dig- 



