When staying at Heythrop Park, Oxfordshire, in March 1901, I went out on a morning when the frost was so hard that the hounds could not hunt till noon, and found seeds which had germinated on the ground beneath a glaucous cedar. The radicles were protruding from the seeds, in some cones which had not fallen; I took them home and planted them, and have now several healthy young trees about a foot high.
I also sowed a quantity of imported seed in the open field, where they germinated well, but the plants were all destroyed by mice, frost, and drought in the first season, though seedlings raised in the nursery stood the winter without protection. As the seed can be procured in quantity at a cheap rate from Messrs. Vilmorin of Paris, I should recommend its being sown in a frame and protected for two or three years, after which it will require two to three years more in the nursery before planting out. .
The tree seems to like lime in the soil, and will, in my opinion, prove a valuable timber tree if planted in open woods, in warm, dry soils, sufficiently close together to prevent its branches from developing too much, and possibly if mixed with beech it might thrive better than alone.
As regards the relative rate of growth of the Atlas and Lebanon cedars we have the evidence of M. André Leroy, the well-known nurseryman of Angers, who, in the Belgique Horticole, 1867, p. 59, gives the following measurements:—
| Lebanon Cedar | Atlas Cedar | ||||
| Age | Height. | Age | Height. | ||
| Metres. | Centimetres. | Metres. | Centimetres. | ||
| 1 year | 0 | 6-8 | 1 year | 0 | 10-15 |
| 2 years | 0 | 12-15 | 2 years | 0 | 20-30 |
| 3 years„ | 0 | 18-25 | 3 years„ | 0 | 40-50 |
| 4 years„ | 0 | 36 | 4 years„ | 1 | 0 |
| 5 years„ | 0 | 50 | 5 years„ | 1 | 75 |
| 6 years„ | 0 | 75 | 6 years„ | 2 | 50 |
| 7 years„ | 1 | 0 | 7 years„ | 3 and upwards | |
After seven years of age, he states that the annual growth was often more than one metre, and mentions a tree only twelve years old, from seed, which was one metre in circumference (I presume at the ground). He also says that it is easier to transplant, and endures exposure and bad soil better than the Lebanon cedar, and believes that it will prove a valuable tree for planting on barren wastes where nothing else will thrive.
These remarks, no doubt, will apply better to the soil of Central France than to England, but I have the highest possible opinion of the hardiness of the tree, and have found it endure the damp, cold, and early and late frosts of the Cotswold hills in a way that few other conifers will do. So far as my experience goes, however, it is not a tree which can be transplanted without some care in a small state, and when it has had its roots cramped in small pots, as is often done by nurserymen for con-
