THE  CEDARS  OF  LEBANON. 
435 
Syria  all  plants  necessary  to  life,  or  conducive  to  health,  are 
either  indigenous  or  flourish  under  cultivation  in  the  open  air, 
and  that  the  indigenous  materia  medica  supplies  types  of  all 
the  leading  groups  of  remedies  used  in  the  healing  art.  This 
statement  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  in  the  gardens  of  Syria 
grow  the  potato,  bean  in  all  its  varieties,  Indian  corn,  egg-plant, 
squash,  pumpkin,  artichoke,  cucumber,  onion,  tomato,  turnip,  cab- 
bage, cauliflower,  spinach,  carrot,  beet,  and  many  other  vegetables 
and  the  lemon,  orange,  citron,  pomegranate,  apricot,  plum  (in 
all  varieties),  peach,  apple,  cherry,  blackberry,  mulberry, 
banana,  fig,  date,  grape,  and  other  kinds  of  fruit ;  the  walnut, 
pistachio,  filbert,  almond  and  other  nuts ;  the  squill,  castor  oil 
plant,  elaterium,  scammony,  colocynth,  salep,  acacia,  galls, 
poppy,  Conium  maculatiim,  aloe,  various  Euphorbias,  madder 
and  many  other  medicinal  and  economical  plants. —  The  Am, 
Naturalist,  May,  1869. 
THE  CEDARS  OF  LEBANON. 
Dr.  Hooker  makes  the  following  interesting  communication  to 
a  recent  number  of  the  "Gardener's  Chronicle  :" — "  The  Rev. 
M.  Tristram,  F.L.S.,  informs  me  of  a  most  interesting  discovery 
lately  made  in  the  Lebanon,  viz.,  of  several  extensive  groves  of 
cedar  trees,  by  Mr.  Jessup,  an  American  missionary,  a  friend  of 
his  own,  to  whom  he  pointed  out  the  probable  localities  in  the 
interior.  Of  these  there  are  five,  three  of  great  extent^  east  of 
'  Ain  Zabalteh,'  in  the  southern  Lebanon.  This  grove  lately 
contained  10,000  trees,  and  had  been  purchased  by  a  barbarous 
Sheikh,  from  the  more  barbarous  (?)  Turkish  government,  for 
the  purpose  of  trying  to  extract  pitch  from  the  wood.  The  ex- 
periment of  course  failed,  and  the  Sheikh  was  ruined,  but  several 
thousand  trees  were  destroyed  in  the  attempt.  One  of  the  trees 
measured  fifteen  feet  in  diameter,  and  the  forest  is  full  of  young 
trees,  springing  up  with  great  vigor.  He  also  found  two  small 
groves  on  the  eastern  slope  of  Lebanon,  overlooking  theBuka'a, 
above  El  Medeuk ;  and  two  other  large  groves  containing  many 
thousand  trees,  one  above  El  Baruk,  and  another  near  Ma'asiv, 
where  the  trees  are  very  large  and  equal  to  any  others  ;  all  are 
