4 
Probably all of the plants of this tree growing in the eastern states 
have been propagated by cuttings from the Arboretum trees where 
there are now four or five good specimens. 
The beautiful Silver Fir of the coast, Abies grandis, which ranges 
from northern Vancouver Island to northern California, also extends 
inland along the mountains of northern Idaho, and some of the Idaho 
plants have done well here for forty-four years and are in a healthy 
condition. 
Probably, however, the most generally interesting experiment of the 
sort made by the Arboretum is the one with the Cedar of Lebanon. 
For centuries it was believed in western Europe that this tree grew 
naturally only on Mt. Lebanon in Palestine, and all the trees in culti- 
vation were raised from seeds gathered on the Lebanon or from the 
trees grown from these seeds in England or France, and succeeded in 
growing to a great size and beauty in these countries. The trees from 
Palestine were never hardy in New England or really healthy in any 
part of the eastern states. A comparatively few years ago it was 
discovered that the Cedar of Lebanon formed forests on the Antitaurus 
Mountains in Asia Minor about five hundred miles north and in a much 
colder region than the Lebanon. In 1901 the Arboretum sent a collector 
from Smyrna to the Antitaurus to collect seeds of the Cedar of Leba- 
non. He was very successful and sent to the Arboretum a quantity of 
seeds and a large amount of herbarium material. Much of the seed was 
distributed at once in the United States and in Europe, but no report 
from it has ever been received at the Arboretum. The seeds planted 
here, however, grew well but the trees have grown irregularly in size. 
The tallest of them are already at least thirty feet high and have 
grown more rapidly than any seedlings of conifers planted here in the 
Arboretum. These trees are perfectly hardy, although during one ex- 
ceptionally severe winter the leaves of a few of them were all killed. 
A new crop of leaves soon appeared and the growth for that year even 
does not appear to be at all checked. 
It is believed that what is certainly the largest collection of cone- 
bearing trees and shrubs in the United States is growing in the Arbor- 
etum, although it is certain that most of them will never be able to 
grow here to the size which these trees attain in better soil and a more 
temperate climate. 
The Arboretum offers exceptional opportunities for the student of 
conifers in its herbarium which is believed to be the best in the world; 
only the few species already known which occur on the mountains of 
New Guinea are unrepresented in it. 
