important, since it gives a totally different idea of the hardness of cedar-wood from what English-grown specimens do.
It is not my purpose to offer anything beyond an outline of the chief results we obtained; these will be given in detail elsewhere, when the materials necessary for substantiating them have arrived in England: they were certainly more novel and interesting; than we had ventured to hope for, and determined Captain Washington to direct a detailed survey to be made of the whole head of the valley, or basin, in which the Cedars grow; this was executed by Captain Mansell last summer, and is now on its way to England, accompanied by sections of two of the youngest trees, which, as I shall have occasion hereafter to show, are much more interesting scientifically, than sections of the oldest would be. The history of the Cedars of Lebanon cannot, however, be isolated from that of their blood- relations, the Cedars of Taurus, Algeria and India, which I shall therefore also bring under notice in this sketch; regarding the Lebanon plant as the type of all, because it is in many respects intermediate botanically, as it is geographically, betweeen the others.
So far as is at present generally known, the Cedars are confined on Lebanon to one spot, at the head of the Kedisha valley; they have, however, been found by Ehrenberg[1] in valleys to the northward of this. The Kedisha valley, at 6000 feet elevation, terminates in broad, shallow, flat-floored basins, and is 2 to 3 miles across, and as much long; it is here in a straight line 15 miles from the sea, and about three or four from the summit of Lebanon, which is to the northward of it. These open basins have shelving sides, which rise 2 to 4000 feet above their bases; they exactly resemble what are called Corrys in many highland mountains; the floor of that in which the Cedars grow presents almost a dead level to the eye, crossed abruptly and transversely by a confused range of ancient moraines, which have been deposited by glaciers that, under very different conditions of climate, once filled the basin above them, and communicated with the perpetual snow with which the whole summit of Lebanon was, at that time, deeply covered. The moraines are perhaps 80 to 100 feet high; their boundaries are perfectly defined, and they divide the floor of the basin into an upper and lower flat area. The rills from the surrounding heights collect on the upper flat, and form one stream, which winds amongst the moraines on its way to the lower flat, whence it is precipitated into the gorge of the Kedisha. The Cedars grow on that portion of the moraine which immediately borders this stream, and nowhere else; they form one group, about 400 yards in diameter, with an out-
- ↑ When in Syria I was unable to obtain any information relative to the statement contained in Murray's Handbook of Syria (i. 585), that Cedars grew in other localities besides the Kedisha vaUey. Recently, however, I have inquired of my friend Professor Ehrenberg (the authority given for the statement), who informs me, in a letter full of interesting matter relating to the Cedars, that he found many trees in forests of Oak, &c., on the route from Beherre to Behinnate.
