CEDRUS LIBANI 
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41 
their more deliberate ancestors in Lebanon. A large proportion of those which were first planted are 
already gone, or are fast hastening to decay. The Hendon great tree was blown down in 1779. The 
Hillingdon tree, 132 years old, and between 15 and 16 feet in circumference, was blown down in 1790. 
That at Enfield, although still a fine tree, is much maimed. Of the four trees originally planted in the 
Chelsea Botanic Garden, two went long ago; the third fell about twenty years ago, and only one now 
remains, and it is getting very scraggy. It has not increased in height for many years—not since Loudon 
wrote—and, instead of increasing a foot in girth every five years, as is the normal rate at a younger stage, 
it has only increased half-a-foot in these thirty years.* The two trees at Hopetoun House are decaying 
rapidly. Those now standing at Chiswick, as Mr. Barron informs us, are still sound; but it is scarcely 
time for them to go yet, their full age, even for this country, not having yet been attained. M. Vilmorin 
tells us that, of two Cedars planted by his grandfather at Verrieres, near Paris, so recently as 1816, 
although one is sound and prosperous, having produced the immense growth of 81 feet in height in the 
short space of sixty-five years, the other has been already in a decaying state for the last twenty-four years. 
Of course, the cause of the slower growth and longer life on Mount Lebanon is the different conditions 
of life in that locality. Loudon says : “ When the tree has grown on mountains, the annual layers are much 
narrower, and the fibre much finer, than when grown on the plains ; so much so, that a piece of Cedar wood 
brought from Mount Lebanon by Dr. Pariset in 1829, and which he had made into a small piece of fur¬ 
niture, presented a surface compact, agreeably veined and variously, and which, on the whole, may be 
considered handsome.” It is scarcely necessary to say that the reason for this being the case in timber 
grown in the mountains, rather than in the plains, is the severer climate in the former. It might grow on 
the mountains until doomsday, without differing in the slightest degree from the trees in the plains, if the 
climate were the same in both. Trees, which in this country grow as slowly as those in Lebanon, will, 
doubtless, have to a certain extent the same properties as those of that country, but only to a certain extent, 
for they have not entirely the same conditions of life. They may have as much cold in winter, but they 
have not the heat of the Syrian sun in summer. 
Properties and Uses .—The chief use of the Cedar in this country is planting for decoration ; and it is 
usually said that it especially harmonises with buildings. Its stately port and horizontal tabular branches 
have apparently something architectural about them, and the conventional treatment of the tree by artists 
has given our minds a predisposition to associate it with masonry. 
We do not well see at first why this should be; but we know that 
the best associations of her products are those indicated by nature 
herself: and that the painter never produces so successful a result 
as when he extends the exactness of his imitation, not only to the 
special feature he copies, but to the proper association of the 
object he depicts. Those mingled together by nature herself are 
adapted the one to the other, and are always harmonious. When 
an inconsiderate painter introduces palms or other exotic foliage 
into a northern landscape, we feel the incongruity, and the effect 
is spoiled. It may be that this feeling is partly the result of education and mental association, as Yews 
and Cypresses are made the emblems of grief and the companions of grave-stones ; but we imagine that 
it is not wholly so: there is a natural fitness of things which enables us to select the proper accompani¬ 
ments of each tree; and, to give due effect to their character, the scenery of their native land should be 
studied, and its style selected, as far as possible, for the trees that we plant. 
* Mr. Thomas Moore, the curator of the Chelsea Botanic Garden, who has kindly supplied us with full details regarding the remaining tree, mentions that its height now is 
60 feet, the trunk 13 feet 9 inches in girth at 3 feet from the ground, and the boughs spread out from the trunk as a centre 34 feet on the north side, 33J feet on the south, 29 on 
the west, and 27 on the east. The comparative shortness on the east side arises from their having been there in contact with the other tree which last fell. 
Fig. 31- 
[33] 
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