VIEW OF THE GENUS CUPRESSUS. 331 
Humboldt considered the native home of the Cypress to be 
the mountains of Buseh west of Herat. Ritter agrees that the 
true home of the mountain Cypress lies to the west of the Valley 
of the Indus in the table-lands of Caboul and Afghanistan. 
“From this home the Cypress migrated westward in company 
with the Iranian worship of the sun. The Zends saw in the 
heavenward aspiring obelisk shape of the tree the image of the 
sacred flame ....and all over Iran venerable specimens of it 
adorned the temples of fire, the courts of the palaces and the 
-centre of the Medo-Persian shrubberies or ‘ paradises.’ Following 
the path of the oldest Assyrio-Babylonian migrations, the Cypress 
very early arrived in the countries of the Aramwo-Canaanite 
tribes, the Lebanon and the island of Cyprus, which took its 
name from the tree, and there too became a holy tree in which a 
goddess of nature was present; the same shown to us in the 
"Troad by Virgil, who describes her ancient deserted temple with 
the sacred Cypress, in this case calling the deity Ceres, while in 
-another he calls her Diana.” * 
With reference to the original habitat of the Cypress in 
Afghanistan, the testimony of Aitchison is not very strong. In 
his note on the Products of Western Afghanistan and of North- 
eastern Persia t, he tells us that the native names are saur, saro, 
sarun, sarwi, and sawu; and continues: “ A few of this occur 
cultivated in gardens at Herat ; I fancy I saw some at Meshad. 
The only one I have noted in my Journal is a tree to the west of 
the fort of Sangun.” In the same author’s ‘ Botany of the 
Afghan Delimitation Commission’ £ no mention whatever is 
made of any Cupressus. Roxburgh § says “the upright variety 
is a native of China and of the northern mountains of India and 
Persia. It does not thrive on the plains of Bengal.” 
2. Cupressus LUSITANICA, Miller, Dict. ed. vit. (1768) n. 3. 
Arbor com’ effusà modo densissime, modo laxiuscule ramosá, 
ramis teretibus; foliis ramealibus deltoideo-ovatis subulatis ; 
ramis herbaceis oblongo-lanceolatis bipinnatim ramulosis con- 
fertim seu laxiuscule tetrastiche ramulosis, ramulis tetragonis 
* «The Wanderings of Plants and Animals,’ by Victor Hehn ; edited by J. S. 
Stallybrass, p. 212. " 
+ Aitchison in Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinb. xviii. (1891) p. 51. 
+ Trans, Linn. Soc. 2nd ser. Bot. vol iii, (1857) p. 113. 
§ ‘Flora Indica,’ ed. Clarke, p. 678. 
