OBSERVATIONS ON HIMALAYAN CONIFERS. 



269 



trary, the cones break up spontaneously while still on the tree, 

 as soon as they are ripe ; and hence, when Moorcroft visited 

 some Deodar groves in Kashmeer, he was disappointed in pro- 

 curing seeds. This is a marked difference : but its glaucous 

 leaves would scarcely warrant a specific distinction, for, in the 

 Arboretum, Loudon mentions a variety of Cedrus Libani, 

 " the silver cedar," with leaves quite glaucous. In general, 

 however, the distinction here also holds good, for even on the 

 oldest Deodars, the shoots and tufts of fresh leaves, from April 

 till June, are of a light blue-green, which, in immediate contrast 

 with the dark foliage of the last season, imparts during these 

 months a curious mottled appearance to the tree : on many trees 

 this tint is permanent. 



Dr. Rosenmuller, following many ancient versions, is of 

 opinion that the Hebrew Berosh denotes the cypress, not the 

 pine or fir, as rendered by our translators ; and thus the temple 

 of Solomon, with doors and floor of Berosh, may have been 

 indebted for its durability to the cypress rather than to the cedar 

 of Lebanon. He shows that the former entered into the con- 

 struction of many other temples of antiquity. Thus Pliny 

 (XVI. 42) states that the doors and other parts of tile Ephesian 

 Diana's temple were of cypress ; and Athenaeus describes a 

 splendid ship of Hiero, containing, amongst other articles of 

 vertu, a shrine of Venus incased in cypress wood. The German 

 critic w r ould include under berosh, Cupressus sempervirens, Thuja 

 articulata, and Juniperus Sabina, which last was called Brathys 

 by the Greeks, adding their own termination to the Syriac form 

 berosh. {Brathys has recently been applied to some species of 

 Hypericum — a division rejected by Dr. Lindley.) Pliny (XII. 

 39) adds, that the Bratus grew on Mount Zagros (the range 

 east of the upper Tigris), and that it resembled the cypress, with 

 w ood having the odour of cedar. The passage of Arrian , referred 

 to p. 88, is in B. VII. c. 19, of Rooke's translation : " The same 

 author (Aristobulus) also tells us that Alexander had ordered 

 cypress trees to be cut in that province for building several other 

 ships, they growing there in great plenty." Our own experience 

 proves how mutable are names amongst the Coniferce ; or it may 

 be that the original or vague term berosh of Solomon's time had 

 at the epoch of the Captivity become obsolete, or yielded to the 

 more precise appellation "gopher" of which was constructed 

 the ark ; cypress, according to Rosenmiiller, who remarks that 

 copher, pitch, gapherith, sulphur, and gopher, in the Greek from 

 kupar, are cognate terms in sound and sense. Copher also sig- 

 nified, he supposes, our Mendee, Lawsonia biennis, and perhaps 

 the several odoriferous Cyperi (Kvreipoc) may be traced to the 

 same origin. 



