8 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK II. the strongest spirits in vigour. The New-England Cedar is a lofty 

 '-^^y^ grower, and prospers into excellent timber, which, being sawed into 

 planks, makes delicate floors. They shingle their houses also with it, 

 and generally employ it in all their buildings. Why have we no more of 

 it brought us, to raise, plant, and convert to the same uses ? There is the 

 Oxycedros of Lycia, which the architect Vitruvius describes to have its 

 leaf like the Cypress ; but the right Phoenician resembles more the 

 Juniper, bearing a cone not so pointed as the other, as we shall come 

 to shew. 



After these, I shall not here descend to the inferior kinds, which some 

 call Dwarfs, and common Juniper-like shrubs, fitter to head the borders 



England. Turner, one of our earliest herbalists, where he treats " of the Pyne-tree, and 

 other of that Kynde," says nothing of it. Gerarde, published by Johnson in l636, mentions 

 it not as growing here ; and Parkinson, in his Theatrum Botanicum, l640, speaking of tiie 

 Cedrus Magna conifera Libani, says, " The branches, some say, all grow upright, but others, 

 straight out." It is very certain, from what Mr, Evelyn says in the beginning of this chapter, 

 that the Cedar of Lebanon was not, in 1664, cultivated in England; but from tlie warm 

 manner that he expresses himself upon this head, it is probable that it soon after became 

 an object of the planter's attention. 



There are said to be a few Cedar-trees still remaining upon Mount Libanus, which are 

 preserved with a religious strictness : for we are informed, from the Memoirs of the 

 Missionaries in the Levant, that, upon the day of the Transfiguration, the Patriarch of the 

 Marqnites, (Christians inhabiting Mount Libanus,) attended by a number of bishops, priests, 

 and monks, and followed by five or six thousand of the religious from all parts, repairs to 

 these Cedars, and there celebrates that festival which is called " The feast of Cedars." — 

 We are also told that the Patriarch officiates pontifically on this solemn occasion ; that his 

 followers are particularly mindful of the blessed Virgin on this day, because the Scripture 

 compares her to the Cedars of Lebanon ; and that the same holy Father threatens with 

 ecclesiastical censure those who presume to hurt or diminish the Cedars still remaining. 



The epithet oilqfly, sometimes given to the Cedar, is, by no means just; since from the 

 experience we have of these trees growing in England, as also from the testimony of 

 travellers who have visited the few remaining ones on Mount Libanus, they are not inclined 

 to be lofty, but, on the contrary, extend their branches very wide. The Psalmist makes a 

 proper allusion to this tree in his description of the flourishing state of a people. " They 

 shall spread abroad like a Cedar in Libanus," Had Milton been as good a naturalist as he 

 was a poet, he would not have wrote, 



■ and over head upgrew 



Insuperable height of loftiest shade 



fedor, and Pine, and Fir, and branching Palm. paeapise lost, b iv. 



