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AKBOKKTUM AND FRUTJCETUM.

PART III.

described to havebeen which was usedin the construction ofSolomon’s Temple.

The principal diffi-culty, with referenceto its being the cedarof Holy Writ, is, thatit has never beenfound on, or near,

Mount Lebanon . Itis regarded by theHindoos as a sacredtree, and is called bythem Devadera, orthe Tree of God . Insome places it ishighly venerated, andnever used but to burn as incense on occasions of great ceremony; but, inothers, it is employed for building houses, &c., as a valuable timber tree.Mr. Moorcroft, in his Journal, as quoted in Lambert’s Pinus , gives the followingproofs of the durability of the wood of this tree: —“ A few years ago a buildingerected by the order of the Emperor Akbar was taken down, and its timber(which was that of the deodar) was found so little impaired as to be fit to beemployed in a house built by Rajah Shah. Granting that the former edifice wasconstructed at the same time as the fort of Nagurunger, a. h. 1006 , or a. d.1597, its age must have been 225 years. Zenool Abudeen began to reign overKashmeer a.h. 820, or a.d. 1417; and died a. h. 878, or a. d. 1473. Hismother was interred in a domed building of excellent brick and mortar work,reported to have been erected in the time of the Hindoo sovereigns. In thisbuilding, pieces of deodar were inserted in the walls, by way, apparently, ofstrengthening the bond; and their ends or sides were left on the same planewith the brickwork. The window frames were of the same material, withthe difference, however, of the former being squared and deprived of theirsap wood, whilst the latter, somewhat carelessly, had part of the sap woodleft; and the surface was only slightly smoothed, and partly retained itsoriginal form. In the latter instance, the crust of the wood was generallysomewhat crumbly, and had been pierced bv a worm about Jin. in depth;whilst that of the squared wood, exposed much more to the influence of theweather, was neither crumbly nor wormeaten, but was jagged, from the softerpart of the wood, between the plates or ribs, having been often washed by therain, though its structnre had not been attacked by the worm.”

The tree alluded to in the following extract from a letter from BishopHeber to Lord Grenville appears evidently to have been the deodara. Thebishop, speaking of a visit which he paid to the Himalayan Mountains , and ofthe pines which he found there, adds :—“ Another, and of less frequent occur-rence, is a splendid tree, with gigantic arms and dark narrow leaves, which isaccounted sacred, and chiefly seen in the neighbourhood of ancient Hindootemples, and which struck my unscientific eye as very nearly resembling thecedar of Lebanon . I found it flourishing at nearly 9000 ft. above the level ofthe sea, and where the frost was as severe at night as is usually met with atthe same season (November and December) in England.” In Burnes’s Travelsiti the Mysore , he states that “ the frameworks of the houses are made ofdeodara cedar, which is floated down with the inundations of the river Schem,or Hydaspes, from the Himalaya . The durability and fragrance of the woodrecommend it for buildings of every description. We saw a cedar tree,” hecontinues, “ lying on the banks of the Hydaspes, with a circumference of13 ft. On this river the Macedonians constructed the fleet by which theynavigated the Indus ; and it is a remarkable fact, that in none of the Punjab

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