THE rOllEST TREES OE BRITAIN. 
467 
in the trunk, and the tree never, except when 
growing in very exposed situations, puts on the 
depressed abrupt character of the cedar of 
Lebanon. Others of the fir tribe may compete 
with it in heiglit and dimensions, but in econo- 
mic value, beyond all question, it occupies the 
first place. The wood is light, strong, and 
compact, straight in the grain, free from 
knots, easily wrought, and highly perfumed 
with a most delightful aromatic perfume, 
which it never loses. In durability it is cer- 
tainly without a rival ; Kyanized by the hand 
of nature, it defies wind and weather, resist- 
ing the soaking rains of the Himalayan moun- 
tains for ages. Rot, under any aspect, is un- 
known to it. You will see in the Himalayas 
deodar timbers built into the walls of old tem- 
ples now levelled nearly to their foundations ; 
the surface bleached and ragged, but the body 
of the wood undecayed, and emitting its cha- 
racteristic odour fresh as ever. In Cashmeer 
the pillars which support the roof of the great 
Mosque, built in the days of our later Henrys, 
are formed of deodar trees stripped of their 
bark ; they exhibit not a crack or sign of de- 
cay, and still smell like pencil-wood. All the 
boats in the valley are built of deodar, and 
when they get crazy at the joinings by age, 
the old planks have their weathered surface 
planed off by the adze, and are then undis- 
tinguishable from the new wood, along with 
which they are rebuilt. The wood is so 
straight and equal in the grain, that it gives 
planks three feet broad simply by the action 
of the wedge. Timber-saws are unknown in 
the Himalayas. It is hardly possible to over- 
rate its value as a timber-tree, or the ad- 
vantages that would follow from getting it 
established in Britain, where there is every 
prospect of its doing well. It grows fast in 
favourable situations, sometimes making shoots 
two feet long in a single season. 
" Bishop Heber, in a letter to Lord Gren- 
ville, giving an account of a visit which he 
paid to the Himalayan Mountains, describes 
it as a ' splendid tree, with gigantic arms and 
dark narrow leaves, which is accounted sacred, 
and is chiefly seen in the neighboui'hood of 
ancient Hindoo temples, and which struck my 
unscientific eye as nearly resembling the cedar 
of Lebanon. I found it flourishing at nearly 
nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, 
and when the frost was as severe at night as 
is usually met with at the same season in 
England.' 
" Mr. Moorcroft gives the following proofs 
of the durability of the timber : ' A few years 
ago a building, erected by the order of the 
Emperor Akbar, probably about 1597, was 
taken down, and its timber, which was that of 
the deodar, was found so little impaired as to 
be fit to be employed in a house built by 
Rajah Shah. Its age must then have been 
two hundred and twenty-five years.' He also 
describes a mausoleum, which was erected 
nearly four hundred years since, the walls of 
which are of brick and mortar, strengthened 
with beams of deodar. In this last instance, 
the sap-wood, which had been carelessly left 
in some places, had been pierced by a worm 
to the depth of a quarter of an inch, but the 
heart-wood, notwithstanding this long expo- 
sure to the weather, was neither crumbly nor 
worm-eaten, the only perceptible effect being, 
that the surface was jagged, from the softer 
parts of the wood having been often washed 
t)y the rain. He also obtained specimens of 
the wood from a bridge in Ladakh, which had 
been exposed to the water for nearly four 
hundred years. It has a remarkably fine 
close grain, capable of receiving a very high 
polish ; so much so indeed, that a table formed 
of the section of a trunk nearly four feet in 
diameter, has been compared to a slab of 
brown agate. 
" It is readily propagated by seeds, and 
may be raised also from cuttings. It has also 
been grafted on the larch, but can scarcely be 
expected to attain perfection, while depend- 
ent on the roots of a deciduous tree, the du- 
ration of which, compared to its own, is yary 
limited. It has also been grafted on the cedar 
of Lebanon, with a better chance of success. 
The country is indebted for the first introduc- 
tion of deodar seeds to the Hon. William 
Leslie Melville, who brought home some con( s 
in 1831, and supplied seeds to the Horticul- 
tural Society, &c. By the liberality of the 
East India Company they have since been 
imported in large quantities, and ti'ees are 
now so abundant, that although they were 
sold in 1838 at the high price of two gui- 
neas each, seedlings two years old may now 
be purchased at the rate of four shillings a 
dozen, 
" The largest plantation of deodars which 
has been made in Europe is that of W. 
Ogilvie, Esq., secretary of the Zoological 
Society, who, on his estate of Altinachree in 
Tyrone, has planted eleven acres." — Pp. 419 
—423. 
The work is illustrated, as most of the 
works of the Society for Promoting Christian 
Knowledge are; that is, with a great number 
of beautifully executed engravings, (no less 
than a hundred and eighteen,) either specimens 
of extraordinary trees which have been con- 
nected with many historical events, or with 
explanatory sketches of the flowers and seed- 
vessels of the subjects under notice ; and the 
work is neatly, or rather elegantly, printed, 
without which, indeed, many of the elaborate 
engravings would have been thrown away ; 
and the reader Avill not fail to admire the 
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