CAVENDISH on astronomical instruments; and his Electrical Researches (1771-81) were edited by Professor Clerk Maxwell (1879). See his Life by G. Wilson, forming vol. i. of the Cavendish Society's Works (1846). Cavendish, THOMAS, circumnavigator, was born about 1555 at Trimley St Martin, near Ipswich, and, after squandering his patrimony at court, shared in Grenville's expedition to Virginia (1585). On 21st July of the following year he sailed from Plymouth with 122 men and three ships of 40, 60, and 140 tons, and, by Sierra Leone and Brazil, reached the Strait of Magellan, whose passage took seven weeks. During the nine months that he cruised in the Pacific, he burned three Spanish towns and thirteen ships; then, with a rich booty, but only the largest of his three vessels, he returned by way of the Indian Archipelago and the Cape of Good Hope to England, 10th September 1588. Elizabeth knighted him, and he took to his old mode of life, till in August 1591 he sailed on a second expedition, intended to rival the first. It ended in utter disaster, and in 1592 Cavendish died broken-hearted off Ascension. career. Cavour, COUNT CAMILLO BENSO DI, the restorer of Italian unity and nationality, was born at Turin, August 10, 1810. He was descended from one of the ancient noble families of Piedmont, and being the younger son was destined for a military At the military school he distinguished himself by his mathematical talent, and at an early age was appointed to a post in the engineers. But as his liberal opinions proved unfavourable to his stay in the army, he left it in 1831. His good sense, however, taught him that the deliverance of Italy could not be accomplished by secret conspiracy and spasmodic revolutionary outbreaks. There was nothing for him therefore but to retire into private life. Here he devoted himself to agriculture, introducing great improvements in the cultivation of the family estates; and his efforts generally to raise the economic condition of Piedmont were end in view; he saw that economic improvement thorough and enlightened. But he had a further must be the basis for a better social and political order. And he widened his knowledge of economic and political questions by foreign travel, especially in France and England. Constitutionalism as established and practised in England was on the whole the form of government he most admired. During a residence in England he made himself intimately acquainted with the political organisa tion of the country, and also with its industrial institutions; knowledge of which he made good use on his return to his own country. Cavendish, WILLIAM, Duke of Newcastle, son of Sir Charles Cavendish, and nephew of the first Earl of Devonshire, was born in 1592, and educated at St John's College, Cambridge. His learning and winning address made him a favourite at the court of James I., who in 1610 created him Knight of the Bath, and in 1620 Viscount Mansfield. Charles I., who was splendidly entertained by him at Welbeck and Bolsover, in 1628 created him Earl of Newcastle, and in 1638 appointed him governor to his son, afterwards Charles II. His support of the king during the contest with the parliament was munificent. He contributed £10,000 to the treasury, and raised a troop of 200 knights and gentlemen, who served at their own cost. general of all the forces north of the Trent, he had power to issue declarations, confer knight hood, coin money, and raise men; and the last part of his commission he executed with great zeal. After the battle of Marston Moor (1644), Cavendish retired to the Continent, where he resided, at times in great poverty, till the Restoration. In 1665 hegimento, in which he advocated a representative was created Duke of Newcastle; and he died 25th As December 1676. He was author of two works on horsemanship, and of several plays, not of a character to increase any man's reputation for intelligence. See his Life by his second wife (1667; new ed. by C. H. Firth, 1886).-She, MARGARET LUCAS (1624-74), the daughter of an Essex house, where all the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous,' had married him in 1645, and was herself the author of a dozen folio volumes of poems, plays, letters, &c. Caviare, the salted roes (immature ovaries) of the common sturgeon (Acipenser sturio) and other fishes of the same genus (see STURGEON). It is chiefly prepared in Russia, where, as in various other countries, it is a favourite delicacy, and is largely made in the United States; though the phrase 'Caviare to the general,' shows that the taste is an acquired one. The species of sturgeon from the roe of which it is chiefly prepared inhabit the Caspian and Black seas and their tributary rivers. Among them are the Bielaga, or Great Sturgeon (4. huso), the Osseter (A. güldenstadtii), the Scherg or Sevruga (A. stellatus), and the Sterlet (A. ruthenus), the last-named producing a particularly delicious caviare. AstraKhan is a principle seat for its preparation. The eggs are separated from the connecting tissue, salted, and packed in small barrels ; or, the roes are salted in long troughs, and the eggs are passed through a sieve into kegs. The Caspian fishery has produced over 400,000 lb. in a single year. In this way for sixteen years Cavour energetically laboured as a private gentleman. No opportunity presented itself for any effective influence in politics, and he wisely abstained. It was very different when the spirit of freedom and innovation once more awoke towards the revolutionary period of 1848. In conjunction with Count Cesare Balbo, he in 1847 established a newspaper, Il Risor In system, somewhat after the pattern of the English Hitherto the work of Cavour had been to reform independence of Italy. It was through his advice and influence that Sardinia took part in the war, and as a result of this he managed to bring the Italian question before the Congress of Paris in 1856. In 1858 Cavour had with the Emperor Napoleon a secret meeting, at which the programme for driving Austria out of Italy was drawn up, and during the early part of 1859 there followed a diplomatic contest with Austria, which Cavour conducted with masterly tact and astuteness. The peace of Villafranca, coming after the successful war of 1859, and leaving Austria in possession of Venetia, was a bitter disappointment to Cavour. He resigned his office; yet he had no reason for despair, as the power of Austria in the Italian peninsula was now really broken. On returning to office in 1860 he resumed his great undertaking, but by new methods. Popular feeling in central Italy declared itself in favour of union with the north, and thus Parma, Modena, and Tuscany came under the sway of Victor Emmanuel. It was the part of Cavour to guide opinion towards this end, gaining time for it while he negotiated with the great powers; but he had to purchase the acquiescence of France by the surrender of Nice and Savoy. He secretly encouraged the expedition of Garibaldi, which in 1860 achieved the deliverance of Sicily and southern Italy. When a Sardinian army marched southwards and on the plains of Campania met the volunteers of Garibaldi, the unity of Italy was already an accomplished fact. In 1861 an Italian parliament was summoned, and Victor Emmanuel was declared king of Italy. For the completion of Italian unity only Rome and Venetia were wanting; with a little patience they too could be won. Thus had Cavour achieved the task of his life. But it had not been accomplished without a fearful strain on his health. He had to manage the Sardinian parliament, to meet the artifices, protests, and reproaches of many of the great powers, to prevent revolutionary parties from upsetting the practical mission on which he was engaged, and to direct a great popular and national movement towards a reasonable and attainable goal by methods involving the minimum of delay and violence. For the real power of Sardinia was comparatively limited, and a false step might have been serious. The constant strain was too much for him, and he died June 6, 1861, only a few months after the unity of Italy had been proclaimed. The last words he was heard to utter were those so familiar as expressing an important feature of his policy: 'Brothers, brothers, the free church in the free state.' Cavour is admitted to be the beau ideal of a practical and constructive statesman, who, aiming at just and reasonable ends, seeks to achieve them by effectual and legitimate methods. He made a reformed Piedmont the basis for attaining the unity and regeneration of Italy. The ambition of Napoleon, the military gallantry of the king, the enthusiasm of Garibaldi, were all made to cooperate towards his plan for satisfying the national aspirations of Italy under a lasting constitutional rule. Through his early death much of the work necessary for a sound and healthy national life was left unfinished, yet the subsequent history of Italy proves that Cavour had built on a solid foundation. He deserves a place among the greatest statesmen of modern times. The title is taken from the small Piedmontese town of Cavour, 28 miles SW. of Turin. See De la Rive, Le Comte de Cavour, Récits et Souvenirs (Paris, 1863; Eng. trans. of same date); Bianchi, La Politique de Cavour (Turin, 1885); his Lettere, edited by Chiala (6 vols. 1883 87); also the biographies of him by Massari (Turin, 1873) and Mazade (Paris, 1877; Eng. trans. of same date). CAXIAS Cavy (Cavia), a genus of Rodents, best known by the domesticated species (Cavia cobaya), the common Guinea-pig (q.v.). Cawdor, a village in Nairnshire, 5 miles SW. of Nairn. Cawdor Castle, near by, the seat of the Earl of Cawdor, was founded in 1454, but is one of the three places which tradition has assigned as the scene of King Duncan's murder by Macbeth in 1040. A series of papers from the charter-room at Cawdor was edited by Cosmo Innes under the title of The Book of the Thanes of Cawdor (1859). See CAMPBELL. of the mineral called Heavy Spar or Sulphate of Cawk, a popular name for a massive variety Baryta. See BARYTA. Cawnpore' (Kanhpur), a city of the Northwestern Provinces, on the right bank of the Ganges, 42 miles SW. of Lucknow, 266 SE. of Delhi, and 628 NW. of Calcutta. The river in front, varying, according to the season, from 500 yards in width to more than a mile, presents a large and motley assemblage of steam-vessels and native craft; the principal landing-place is the beautiful Sarsiya ghát. Cawnpore, at least as a place of note, is of recent origin, being indebted for its growth, besides its commercial facilities, partly to military and political considerations. In 1777, being then an appendage of Oudh, it was assigned by the nawab as the station of a subsidiary force; and in 1801 it became, in name as well as in fact, British property. Its cantonments, having accommodation for 7000 troops, contain a population of about 38,000. Pop. of the city (1891) 188,712, giving a total of about 227,000, of whom 125,000 were Hindus, and 5000 Christians. At the outbreak of the mutiny in May 1857, Cawnpore contained about 1000 Europeans, 560 of whom were women and children. The hasty, ill-chosen entrenchments into which they had thrown themselves, were speedily invested by overwhelming numbers of the mutineers, led on by the infamous Nana Sahib. For three weeks the few defenders held gallantly out; but at last they surrendered on promise of a safe-conduct to Allahabad. The sepoys accompanied them to the banks of the Ganges, and scarcely were they embarked on the boats, when a murderous fire was opened upon them, and only four men escaped. The women and children, 125 in number, were reserved for a crueller fate, and were carried back to Cawnpore. Hearing that Havelock was within two days' march of the place, Nana Sahib advanced to meet him. He was driven back, and, smarting under defeat, returned to Cawnpore, and gave orders for the instant massacre of his helpless prisoners, who, dead and dying, were cast into a well. Havelock and his small army arrived on 16th July, only to find to their unutterable horror that they came too late to rescue the women and children. A memorial church, a Romanesque redbrick building, now marks the site of General Wheeler's entrenchment; whilst the scene of the massacre is occupied by the memorial gardens. Over the well itself a mound has been raised, its summit crowned by an octagonal Gothic inclosure, with Marochetti's white marble angel in the centre. but mentorial of the tragedy. The district of But Sir George Trevelyan's Cawnpore (1865) is the Cawnpore has an area of 2370 sq. m., and a population of about 1,300,000. It is an alluvial plain of great fertility. The vine is cultivated, and indigo grows wild. Besides its two mighty rivers, the Ganges and Jumna, and their navigable tributaries, the Ganges Canal traverses the country for 60 miles, and there is ample communication by rail. Caxias, (1) a town of Brazil, in the state of Maranhão, on the navigable Itapicuru, 190 miles from its mouth, with an active trade in cotton. CAXTON Pop. 10,000.-(2) An Italian agricultural colony in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, founded in 1875. Pop. 13,680. Europeans, large numbers of the convicts having been carried off by various malignant fevers. The French took possession of the island in 1604, and again, after it had been held by the English and Dutch, in 1677. The name of the capital is sometimes used for the whole of French Guiana (q.v.). Pop. about 10,000. Cayenne Cherry. See EUGENIA. Cayenne Pepper consists of the powder of the dried pods, and more especially of the dried seeds of species of Capsicum (q.v.). Cayes, or AUX CAYES, a seaport of Hayti, on the south-west coast, 95 miles WSW. of Port-auPrince. Pop. 8000. Cayley, ARTHUR, mathematician, was born at Richmond, Surrey, in 1821. He was educated at King's College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in 1842. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1849, and established a practice as a conveyancer. In 1863 he was elected Cambridge, and in 1875 to a fellowship of Trinity first Sadlerian Professor of pure Mathematics at ford, Dublin, and Leyden. He was president of College. He received honorary degrees from Oxthe Royal Astronomical Society (1872-73), and of the British Association at its Southport meeting in 1883, where his address on the ultimate possibilities of mathematics attracted much attention. In 1882 he lectured at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and received the Copley medal of the Royal Society. His chief book is an Elementary edition of his Mathematical Papers was begun in Treatise on Elliptic Functions (1876); a ten-volume 1889. He died 26th January 1895. Caxton, WILLIAM, the first English printer, was born in the Weald of Kent about 1422. He was apprenticed in 1438 to Robert Large, a wealthy London mercer, who was Lord Mayor in 1439-40. On his master's death in 1441, he went to Bruges; he prospered in business, and became in 1462 governor of a chartered association of English merchants in the Low Countries. In 1471 he abandoned commerce and attached himself to the household of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward ÏV.; and apparently towards the end of 1476 he set up his wooden printing-press at the sign of the Red Pale in the Almonry at Westminster. The art of printing he had acquired during his sojourn in Bruges, doubtless from Colard Mansion, a well-known printer of that city; and in 1474 he put through the press at Bruges the first book printed in the English tongue, the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, a translation of Raoul Lefevre's work. The Game and Playe of the Chesse was another of Caxton's earliest publications; but the Dietes and Sayings of the Philosophers, published in 1477, is the first book which can with certainty be maintained to have been printed in England. All the eight founts of type from which Caxton printed may be called Black Letter. Of the ninety-nine known distinct productions of his press, no less than thirty-eight survive in unique copies or in fragments only. His books have no title-pages, although many have prologues and colophons. Some have no points at all; others the full-stop and colon alone. The semicolon never occurs; the comma is usually marked by short (1) or by long (1) lines. The pages are not Caylus, ANNE CLAUDE PHILIPPE DE TUBInumbered and have no catchwords. ( (For Caxton'sÈRES, COMTE DE, archeologist, was born in Paris imprint, see article Book.) Caxton enjoyed the in 1692. After serving in the Spanish War of Succession, he travelled in Greece and the East, returnpatronage and friendship of some of the chief men of his time. He was diligent in the exercise of his ing to Paris in 1717 to devote himself to the study of antiquities, and the promotion of the fine arts. If his industry sometimes outran his intelligence, it is still true that he did vast service to archæ ology. He died at Paris in 1765. His chief work is his Recueil d'Antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, romaines, et gauloises (7 vols. 1752-67). His copperplate engravings have had a longer life than his stories of Eastern life. eraft or in translation till within a few hours of his death, which seems to have happened about the close of the year 1491. Gibbon denounces Caxton's choice of books, and complains that the world is not indebted to England for one first edition of a classic author; but it should be remembered that Caxton had to make his printing business pay, and that he could therefore supply only books for which there was a demand. Nor can it be said that a printer had no regard for pure literature who produced editions of Chaucer, Lydgate, Gower, Sir Thomas Malory's King Arthur, and translations of Cicero's De Senectute and De Amicitia. Caxton's industry was marvellous. He was an accomplished linguist, and the translations which he executed himself fill more than 4500 printed pages, while the total produce of his press, exclusive of the books printed at Bruges, reaches to above 18,000, nearly all of folio size. At the Osterley Park sale in 1885, no less than ten Caxtons were sold; one of them, the Chesse, bringing £1950. In 1877 the printer and his work were fittingly commemorated by a typographical exhibition in London. See The Old Printer and the New Press, by Charles Knight (1854); Life and Typography of William Caxton (1861-63), by W. Blades; and the Biography and Typography of Caxton (1877; 2d. ed. 1882), by the same author. Cayenne, a fortified seaport, capital of French Guiana, on an island at the mouth of a river of the same name. A new town is connected with the older portion by the Place d'Armes, bordered with orange-trees. The harbour is the best on the coast, but insecure and shallow. Cayenne, though it is the entrepôt of all the trade of the colony, is chiefly known as a great French penal settlement (since 1852). The climate is extremely unwholesome for Cay'man, a local name loosely applied to various species of alligator-e.g. to Alligator mississippiensis, the single species of the United States, or more frequently to other species found in tropical or subtropical America. The name has also been used, to all appearance unnecessarily, as the scientific title of a genus, and as such has been most frequently applied to A. palpebrosus and A. trigonatus. It seems more reasonable to regard all the alligators as within the limits of a single genus. See ALLIGATOR. Caymans, three fertile coral islands of the Caribbean Sea, 165 miles NW. of Jamaica, of which they form a dependency. Discovered by Columbus, they were by him called Tortugas, from the abundance of turtle, still the staple production of the group. Area, 225 sq. m.; pop. 2400, 2000 inhabiting the largest island, Grand Cayman. Cazalla de la Sierra, a town of the Spanish province of Seville, 38 miles ENE. of Seville city, on the southern slope of the Sierra Morena, with important mines, and a trade in olives and wine. Pop. 8322. Cazem'bé, the title of an African prince, whose territory, also called Cazembé, extends between the Moero and Bangweolo lakes, west of 30° E. long. The people are industrious and skilful husbandmen and smiths, and carry on a brisk trade in ivory, copper, &c. It is now mainly included in British Central Africa or the British sphere. Dr Livingstone died here in 1873. Cazorla, a town of Andalusia, Spain, 40 miles ENE. of Jaën. Pop. 6651. Ceanothus. See RED ROOT. Ceará, a state of Brazil, on the north coast. Area, 40,240 sq. m. It raises cattle, cotton, coffee, and sugar; iron and gold are found. Pop. about 950,000. The capital, Ceará, is on an open roadstead. It exports sugar, rubber, hides, &c., brought from Baturite (90 miles inland) by a railroad of which Ceará is the terminus. Pop. about 30,000. Cebadilla. See SABADILLA. Ce'bes, a Theban, disciple and friend of Socrates, and reputed author of the Pinax, or votive tablet,' a philosophical dialogue, representing allegorically the temptations of this life, and teaching that True Learning can alone make for righteousness. In spite of its pure Attic, and its truly Socratic tendency, modern criticism now assigns the work to the 2d century A.D. Extremely popular in the middle ages, a sort of 'Pilgrim's Progress' indeed, it was translated into all the European languages, and into Arabic (possibly about the 9th century), in which latter version alone is found the close of the dialogue. See Jerram's Cebetis Tabula (Oxf. Clar. Press, 1878). Cebú, or ZEBU, a long and narrow island of the Philippines, NW. of Mindanao. Area, with neigh bouring isles, about 2000 sq. m. The valleys are fertile, yielding rice, sugar, cotton, tobacco, cacao, and millet. Pop. 504,076. Capital, Cebu, on the east coast, the oldest city (and capital, 1565-71) of the Philippines. It has a good trade. Pop. 35,243. Ce'bus (Gr., 'an ape' or 'monkey '), a genus of South American monkeys, characterised by a round head and short muzzle, a facial angle of about 60°, long thumbs, and a long prehensile tail entirely covered with hair. The body is covered with short, thick hair. Their voice is soft and pitiful. The species are numerous, all of very lively disposition and gregarious arboreal habits, living in trees. They feed chiefly on fruits, but also on insects, worms, and molluscs. Various species are often seen in zoological gardens and menageries. They are included under the popular designation Sapajou in its wider sense, and some of them are the monkeys to which this name is sometimes more strictly appropriated. The names Sajou and Sai or Caí are also given to some of them, and some are called Capuchin (q.v.) Monkeys. One of the most common species in Guiana is the Weeper Monkey, or Weeper Sapajou (C. apella). Some of the species are adorned with beards. The term Cebidae is often used as a family designation for all the broad-nosed New-World Monkeys (Platyrrhini) with prehensile tails, in contrast to the Pithecida, in which the tail is not so adapted. In this family are included the Howling Monkeys (Mycetes), the Spider Monkeys (Ateles), and other genera. See MONKEY. Cecidomy'ia (Gr. kekidion, ‘a gall-nut,' and myia, a fly' or 'gnat'), a genus of dipterous (twowinged) insects in the Tipularia (gnat and mosquito) division. They have beautiful, delicate, downy wings, which have three nervures, and are horizontal when at rest; antennæ as long as the body, with bead-like joints, and whorls of hairs at the joints; long legs, and the first joint of the tarsi very short. The species are numerous; nearly thirty in Britain, and sixty in Europe. All are of small size, but some of them are very important on account of the ravages which their minute maggots effect in grain-crops. C. cerealis, sometimes called the Barley Midge, a brownish-red fly with silvery CECROPIA. wings, of which the maggot is vermilion coloured, is often very destructive to crops of barley and spelt in Germany. The little maggots live in families between the stalk and the sheath of the leaf, abstracting the juice of the plant.-The Wheat-fly (q.v.) and the Hessian Fly (q.v.) belong deposit their eggs on the young buds of trees, which to this genus. Some of the species of Cecidomyia the larvæ transform into galls. While forms like the Hessian fly are of great economic importance, another Cecidomyia is, on account of its extraordinary mode of reproduction, of great scientific interest. According to Wagner, the female lays her eggs under tree-bark or the like; these develop in winter into larvæ. The larvæ, still immature, become reproductive and parthenogenetic. The ovaries rupture, the eggs fall into the body-cavity, where the stimulus of fertilisation is somehow replaced, for the ova develop into larvæ. These eat their parent larva, and after finishing the viscera, leave the empty skin. The nemesis of reproduction overtakes them also, for within them again, though likewise only larvæ, a fresh batch of larvæ develops in similar fashion. After several generations of this immature and fatal reproduction, the final set of larvæ metamorphose in summer into sexual winged insects. See REPRODUCTION. Cecil. See BURGHLEY and SALISBURY. Cecilia, ST, the patroness of music, especially church music, is said to have suffered martyrdom in 230 A.D. Her heathen parents belonged to a noble Roman family, and betrothed their daughter, already a secret convert to Christianity, to a heathen youth named Valerian, who also was soon converted, and ere long suffered martyrdom together with his brother Tiberius. Cecilia, when commanded to sacrifice to idols, firmly refused, and was condemned to death. She was first thrown into a boiling bath, from which she emerged unhurt; next the executioner struck three blows upon her neck with a sword, then fled in horror. Three days later his victim died of her wounds, and received the martyr's crown. She was buried by Pope Urban in the catacombs of Callistus. As early as the 5th century, there is mention of a church dedicated to St Cecilia at Rome; and in 821, by order of the Pope Paschal, her bones were deposited there. St Cecilia is regarded as the inventor of the organ, and in the Roman Catholic Church her festival-day, November 22, is celebrated with splendid_music. Some of our greatest poets, as Chaucer, Dryden, and Pope, have laid poetic tributes on the shrine of St Cecília-the greatest is Dryden's splendid ode. The most famous paintings of St Cecilia are those of Raphael at Bologna, Carlo Dolce in the Dresden Gallery, Domenichino in the Louvre, and Rubens in the Berlin Museum.-Another St Cecilia was born in Africa, and suffered martyrdom by starvation under Diocletian. Her festival falls on the 11th of February. C. Cecro'pia, a genus of Artocarpaceœ. peltata, the Trumpet-tree of the West Indies and South America, has a hollow stem and branches, exhibiting merely membraneous partitions at the nodes. The branches, these partitions being removed, are made into water-pipes and windinstruments. The wood is very light, and is used to make floats for nets, and by the Indians in kindling fires by friction against a harder piece of wood. The bast yields a cordage fibre, and the outer bark is astringent, the fruit resembles a raspberry, the buds furnish a potherb, while the juice hardens into caoutchouc. The leaves and fruit are largely consumed by sloths. The hollow stem is largely inhabited by ants. CECROPS Cecrops, a Pelasgic hero, the first king of Attica, sometimes represented as half man and half dragon. He divided Attica into twelve communities, founded Athens, the citadel of which, at first called Cecropia, commemorated his name, instituted marriage and the worship of the gods, and introduced agriculture, navigation, and commerce. Late writers explained Cecrops as the leader of a colony from Sais in Egypt. Cedar, or CEDAR OF LEBANON, a tree much celebrated from the most ancient times for its beauty, its magnificence, and its longevity, as well as for the excellence and durability of its timber. It is often mentioned in Scripture; it supplied the woodwork of Solomon's temple; and in the poetry of the Old Testament it is a frequent emblem of prosperity, strength, and stability. It belongs to the natural order Coniferæ, and is the Pinus Cedrus of the older botanists; but is now ranked in the genus Cedrus under the name of C. Libani, in reference to its best-known habitat, Mount Lebanon. It is found, however, on other mountains of Syria and Asia Minor, and also in Cyprus. Of the celebrated Cedars of Lebanon only a few now remain. Situated at the head of the Kedisha Valley at 6314 feet elevation, they consist of a grove of trees, 377 in number in 1875, five only being of Cedars of Lebanon. gigantic size, measuring 30 feet round. In age they may vary from 50 or 80 to 800 or 1000 years; but as they have long ceased to add regularly yearly concentric rings of wood to their trunks, there are no reliable data by which to estimate the age of the few patriarchal cedars that yet remain on the Lebanon. Arabs of all creeds have a traditional veneration for these trees; and Maronites, Greeks, and Armenians annually celebrate mass on a homely altar of stone at their feet. The general aspect of the cedar is distinct and majestic in fully developed trees. The trunk is massive, but attains only a moderate height-50 to 80 feet-much branched; the branches assume the proportions of timber, are horizontal, and spreading usually so as to exceed the total height. They are arranged in apparent whorls, or stages, and the branchlets springing from them in a flat fan-like fashion in great profusion and density impart a tabu whiteness that gives to them a strikingly venerable aspect. The cones are erect on the upper sides of the branches, from 3 to 5 inches long and 2 to 2 inches broad, blunt at both ends. They require two years to reach maturity, and do not, as in the case of other allied conifers, drop from the branches, but when ripe the scales only along with the seeds drop to the ground, and leave the axis of the cone attached to the branch. The timber of the Lebanon cedar enjoyed a high reputation for durability in ancient times, which, however, is hardly supported by modern experience. The wood of trees that have been grown in Britain and other parts of Europe has proved light, soft, brittle, liable to warp, and far from durable, probably owing to the immaturity of these comparatively young, though well-developed, samples, and also perhaps to climatic influence. The superior quality of the timber of the Lebanon trees is attested by Sir Joseph Hooker, who visited the famous cedar grove in 1860. The secretions of the cedar of Lebanon have long been celebrated for remarkable properties. The whitish resin (Cedria) which it exudes, it is said the Egyptians used in embalming their dead. Ancient writings were kept in cabinets or boxes of cedar-wood, but it would appear to be rather dangerous to commit modern printed documents to such repositories. Mr Smee, in My Garden, says: 'The wood of the cedar contains a volatile essential oil, which has the curious property of unsettling printers' ink and making it run. Some years ago a Bank of England note was offered to the cashier with its printing disturbed. Inquiry was set on foot, and it was traced to several individuals, who satisfactorily explained its custody and possession. It was then brought to me, when I suggested that the detectives should inquire whether it had been kept in a cedar box; it was then discovered that the last possessor had kept it in a new cedar box which she had recently bought, and thus the mystery was solved.' In very ancient times, cedaroil, a kind of turpentine, was prepared from the wood, and was spread on books in order to their better preservation. The branches of the cedar, like those of the larch in warm countries, exude a sweet substance, which is known by the name of Cedar Manna. The botanist Belon brought a Lebanon cedar with him to France in 1549: when it was intro |