CEDAR, in botany. See CEDRUS, JUNIPERUS, and LARIX.
The species of cedar famous for its duration, is that popularly called by us the cedar of Lebanon*, by the ancients cedrus magna, or the great cedar; also cedrelate, Κεδρυκέν; and sometimes the Phœnician, or Syrian cedar, from the country where it grows in its greatest perfection. It is a coniferous evergreen, of the bigger sort, bearing large roundish cones of smooth scales, standing erect, the leaves being small, narrow, and thick set.—They sometimes counterfeit cedar, by dying wood of a reddish hue: but the smell discovers the cheat, that of true cedar being very aromatic. In some places, the wood of the cajou tree passes under the name of cedar, on account of its reddish colour, and its aromatic smell, which somewhat resemble that of santal. Cedar wood is reputed almost immortal and incorruptible; a prerogative which it owes chiefly to its bitter taste, which the worms cannot endure. For this reason it was that the ancients used cedar tablets to write upon, especially for things of importance, as appears from that expression of Persius, Et cedro digna locutus. A juice was also drawn from cedar, with which they fineared their books and writings, or other matters, to preserve them from rotting; which is alluded to by Horace; by means of which it was, that Numa's books, written on papyrus, were preserved entire to the year 525, as we are informed by Pliny.
Solomon's temple, as well as his palace, were both of this wood. That prince gave king Hiram several cities for the cedars he had furnished him on these occasions. Cortes is said to have erected a palace at Mexico, in which were 7000 beams of cedar, most of them 120 feet long, and twelve in circumference, as we are informed by Herrera. Some tell us of a cedar felled in Cyprus 130 feet long, and 18 in diameter. It was used for the main mast in the galley of king Demetrius. Le Bruyn assures us, that the two biggest he saw on mount Lebanon, measured one of them 57 palms, and the other 47, in circumference. In the temple of Apollo at Utica, there were cedar trees near 2000 years old; which yet were nothing to that beam in an oratory of Diana at Seguitum in
Spain, said to have been brought thither 200 years before the destruction of Troy. Cedar is of so dry a nature, that it will not endure to be fastened with iron nails, from which it usually shrinks, so that they commonly fasten it with pins of the same wood.