DENDROLOGY. 145 



differs from the surrounding waste only by a layer of vegetable 

 mould a little thicker upon the quartzous sand. The summit of 

 the cypress is not pyramidical like that of the spruces, but is 

 widely spread and even depressed upon old trees. The foliage 

 is open, light and of a fresh agreeable tint : each leaf is four or 

 five inches long, and consists of two parallel rows of leaflets upon 

 a common stem. The leaflets are small, fine and somewhat 

 arching, with the convex side outwards. In autumn they change 

 from a light green to a dull red, and are shed soon after. This 

 tree blooms in Carolina about the first of February. The male 

 and female flowers are separately borne by the same tree, the 

 first in flexible pendulous aments, and the second in bunches 

 scarcely apparent. The cones are about as large as the thumb, 

 hard, round, of an uneven surface, and stored with small, 

 irregular, ligneous seeds, containing a cylindrical kernel : they 

 are ripe in October, and retain their productive virtues two years. 

 The wood is fine-grained, and, after being for some time 

 exposed to the light, of a reddish color : it possesses great 

 strength and elasticity, and is lighter and less resinous than that 

 of the pines. To these properties is added the faculty of long 

 resisting the heat and moisture of the southern climate. The 

 color of the bark and the properties of the wood vary with the 

 nature of the soil ; the stocks which grow near the natural bed 

 of the rivers, and are half the year surrounded with water to the 

 height of three or four feet, have a lighter-colored bark than 

 those which stand retired in places that the waters do not reach, 

 or where they sojourn but a moment. The wood, also, is whiter, 

 less resinous and less heavy. These are called JVhite Cypresses. 

 The others, of which the bark is browner and the wood heavier, 

 more resinous, and of a duskier hue, are called Black Cypresses, 

 When destined to be employed in the arts, both varieties should 

 be felled in the winter, and kept till, by a long process, the wood 

 has become perfectly dry. A resin of an agreeable odor and a 

 red color exudes from the cypress ; it is not abundant enough to 

 be collected for commerce, though more copious than that of the 

 white cedar, which is probably the reason of the wood being 

 denser and stronger : it is preferred to that of the pines for the 

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