with its other qualities, be the most valuable tree in the forest. Its resistance to absolute wear is not indeed equal to that of the oak; but it is so bitter, that no insect whatever will touch it, and it seems to be proof against Time himself. We are told that the timber in the temple of Apollo at Utica was found undecayed after the lapse of two thousand years; and that a beam in the oratory of Diana, at Saguntum* in Spain, was fetched from Zante, two centuries before the Trojan war. Some of the most celebrated erections of antiquity were constructed of this tree. "Solomon raised a levy of thirty thousand men out of all Israel and he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month, by courses; and he had threescore and ten thousand that bore burthens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains. And he covered the temple with beams and boards of cedar. And he built chambers against it, which rested on the house, with timber of cedar. And the cedar of the house Murviedro.

:

within was carved with knots and flowers: all was cedar, there was no stone seen." Thus writes the sacred historian, who mentions that the same monarch had a palace of cedar in the forest of Lebanon. Ancient writers notice that the ships of Sesostris, the Egyptian conqueror, one of them two hundred and eighty cubits long, were formed of this timber; as was also the gigantic statue of Diana in the temple at Ephesus. Some difficulty, no doubt, exists, with regard to the ancient history of this celebrated tree, -there being other trees, still named cedars, which, though somewhat resembling them, do not belong to the pine family at all; as the white cedar, which is a cypress; and the red, which is a juniper.

In addition to the durability of its timber, the cedar is, in its appearance, the most majestic of trees; and when it stands alone in a situation worthy of it, it is hardly possible to conceive a finer vegetable ornament. Its height in this country has seldom equalled the taller of the larches, though it has nearly approached to it; but the very air of the tree impresses one with the idea of its comparative immortality. There is a firmness in the bark and a stability in the trunk, in the mode in which that lays hold of the ground, and in the form of the branches and their insertion into the trunk, not found in any other pine, scarcely in any other tree. The foliage, too, is superior to that of any other of the tribe, each branch being perfect in its form: the points of the leaves spread upwards into beautiful little tufts; and the whole upper surface of the branch, which droops in a graceful curve towards the extremity, has the semblance of velvet. The colour is also fine; it is a rich green, wanting the bluish tint of the pine and fir, and the lurid and gloomy one of the cypress.

The description of the cedar of Lebanon by the prophet Ezekiel is fine and true:-" Behold the As

syrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. His boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long. The fir trees were not like his boughs, nor the chestnut trees like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God like unto him in beauty."

Whether the cedars of Lebanon were thinned to exhaustion by the fourscore thousand axes of the King of Israel, or whether they have decayed in consequence of some variation of climate, or other physical change in the country, it is impossible to say; but modern travellers represent that very few now exist, though some are of immense bulk-about thirty-six feet in circumference, and quite undecayed.

The cedar of Lebanon, though it has been introduced into many parts of England as an ornamental tree, and has thriven well, has not yet been planted in great numbers for the sake of its timber. No doubt it is more difficult to rear, and requires a far richer soil than the pine and the larch; but the principal objection to it has been the supposed great slowness of its growth, although that does not appear to be very much greater than in the oak. Some cedars, which have been planted in a soil well adapted to them, at Lord Carnarvon's, at Highclere, have grown with extraordinary rapidity. Of the cedars planted in the royal garden at Chelsea, in 1683, two had, in eighty-three years, acquired a circumference of more than twelve feet, at two feet from the ground, while their branches extended over a circular space forty feet in diameter. Seven-andtwenty years afterwards the trunk of the largest one had increased more than half a foot in circumference; which is probably more than most oaks of a similar age would do during an equal period. The surface soil in which the Chelsea cedars throve so well is

not by any means rich; but they seem to have been greatly nourished from a neighbouring pond, upon the filling up of which they wasted away.

Cedar of Lebanon, in the Royal Garden at Chelsea.

Various specimens of the cedar of Lebanon are mentioned as having attained a very great size in England. One planted by Dr. Uvedale, in the garden of the manor-house at Enfield, about the middle of the seventeenth century, had a girth of fourteen feet in 1789; eight feet of the top of it had been blown down by the great hurricane in 1703, but still it was forty feet in height. At Hendon Place, in Middlesex, a remarkable cedar was blown down in 1779. It had attained the height of seventy feet; the branches covered an area one hundred feet in diameter; the trunk was sixteen feet in circumference at seven feet from the ground, and twenty-one feet at the insertion of the great branches twelve feet above the surface.

G

There were about ten principal branches or limbs, and their average circumference was twelve feet. The age and planter of this immense tree are not distinctly recorded; but some accounts refer its origin to the days of Elizabeth, and even allege that it was planted by her own hand. Hendon Place is now the property of the Right Hon. Lord Tenterden, the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench; and there are still remaining there some old chestnut-trees, which tradition also says were planted by the maiden queen. This is not improbable; for although historians make no mention of the residence of Elizabeth at Hendon, she might have occasionally visited that place, as the property came to the Crown upon the dissolution of the monastery at Westminster, and was granted afterwards by Elizabeth to Sir Edward Herbert: The loss of the cedar tree at Hendon Place is still talked of by the country people; and some even remember this celebrated tree itself. The precise spot on which it grew is said to be marked by a handsome cedar now growing.

Michaux, in his splendid work on the Forest-trees of North America, has described fourteen species of pine, which are found in the extensive woods of that vast country. The most valuable of these are, the "Long-leaved Pine" (Pinus Australis), from which the turpentine and tar of America are príncipally produced; the "White Pine," much used in ship-building; the "Hemlock Spruce" (Abies Canadensis), the timber of which is not good, but which affords bark nearly as excellent for tanning as that of the oak; and the "American Silver Fir" (Abies balsamifera), from which is procured the resinous substance known as Canada balsam.

The principal exportation of deals from America, not only to Europe, but to the West India colonies, is of the timber of the white pine. Extensive as are