466 
THE FOREST TREES OF BRITAIN. 
mous size, with the evergreen beauty of the 
cedar of Lebanon when Hving, and afford- 
ing, when cut down, timber not simply dura- 
ble, but imperishable. No wonder, then, that 
the untaught Hindoos should look on it with 
reverence, giving it a name expressive of this 
feeling, ' the gift of God,' and in some dis- 
tricts using its fragrant wood as a material 
for their temples, and burning it as incense 
on occasions of great ceremony. 
*' The leaves and cones are very like those 
of the cedar of Lebanon ; but the general 
habit of the two trees is different in every 
stage of their growth. When young, the 
deodar resembles a luxuriant larch with a 
leafy base, but the branches are more delicate, 
and thickly clothed with foliage, and the ex- 
tremities of all the shoots, even the leader, 
droop most gracefully. What will be the ap- 
pearance of the full-grown tree in this cli- 
mate it is impossible to conjecture. If it suc- 
ceeds, which it gives every prospect of doing, 
it will prove one of the most valuable addi- 
tions that has ever been made to the trees of 
Britain, both for the sake of its picturesque 
beauty and its timbei\ 
"In its native state, the deodar grows high 
up on the slopes of the Himalayan chain, 
attaining an enormous size and hanging the 
sides of the mountains with a perennial coat 
of verdure. It is not unusual to see it in 
favourable situations with a girth varying 
from twenty-four to thirty feet, with a pro- 
portionate height and vast expanse. No ade- 
quate notion can be formed of the majestic 
character of the tree from the small-sized spe- 
cimens now in existence in England. The 
deodar varies in appearance greatly during its 
growth. The young tree looks a good deal 
like the larch, rising in an elongated conical 
mass, tapering off into a bold leading shoot. 
When it attains a height of fifty or sixty feet, 
the terminal leader withers, the top becomes 
flattened, the lateral growth is increased, and 
the tree drops the character of the larch, and 
puts on that of the cedar. So much does its 
appearance alter, that the English residents at 
the hill stations, like Simla, imagine that there 
are two species : the old tree they call the 
Deodar, and the younger one, the Kelon. No- 
thing can exceed the grandeur of an old deodar 
of thirty feet girth. The branches begin to 
spread horizontally close to the ground, rising 
flight above flight in successive sheeted steps 
into a rounded or slightly flattened top. Seldom 
or never is the slightest trace of decay seen 
