Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/173

CEDAR 165 Linn.). The cedar of Lebanon, or cedar larch, is a native of the coldest parts of Mt. Lebanon and the range of the Taurus, and from its superior magnificence became with Scripture Cedars of Lebanon. writers a favorite emblem for greatness, splen- dor, and majesty. The durability and fragrance of its wood caused it to be sought for costly buildings, as the palace of David and the tem- ple of Solomon. Though it formerly covered Cones of Cedar of Lebanon. Lebanon with dense forests, so that fourscore thousand hewers were employed by Solomon in obtaining timber from them, yet the de- struction of the trees for architectural purposes was more rapid than their growth, and in the 6th century Justinian found it difficult to procure cedar timber enough for the roof of a single church. At present they appear to be confined to a few localities, the most fre- quently visited among them being a valley in the Lebanon range, about 15 m. from the sea, &t an elevation of 6,000 ft. Belon, in 1550, counted here 28 cedars; Rauwolf, in 1574, found 24, and two others the branches of which were decayed through age ; De la Roque, in 1588, found 20; Maundrell, in 1696, 16 ; Pococke, about 1740, counted only 15. Graham measured 12 trees whose circumfer- ence was from 22 to 40 ft., the largest trees having a diameter of about 16 ft. Around these there is a grove of several hundred smaller trees, appar- ently of a different species of cedar. See- tzen, Ehrenberg, Berg- gren, and Bov6 have described other groves. Henry H. Jessup, an American missionary in Syria, in 1867 de- scribed eleven distinct groves of cedars, five in northern and six in southern Lebanon. The cedar of Goa is found wild in parts of India and Japan, and has been naturalized in Portugal around Cintra. It is the handsom- est tree of the genus cupressm, and distin- guished by its abundance of long dichoto- mous pendent branchlets. The Indian cedar is a large tree found wild on the mountains of Nepaul and Thibet, at a height of about 10,000 ft. above the sea. Its timber possess- es the qualities attributed by the ancients to the cedar of Lebanon, being compact, resin- ous, and fragrant. It is much used for build- ing in India, and has been introduced into Bed Cedar. England as an ornamental tree. The white cedar is an abundant tree in swamps in the United States southward from Massachusetts and Ohio, reaching a height of from 30 to 70