IDENTIFICATION OF THE CYPRESS 157 



The C3rpress tree is held to be identified with the 

 Gopher tree of the Bible. The ark, " pitched within 

 and without," was made of Gopher, and to the wood 

 of the C. Sempervirens, or Roman Cypress, in parti- 

 cular is accorded the honour of supplying the material 

 of its construction. And this is all we propose to 

 narrate here concerning a semi-historical, semi-court 

 guide, description of this tribe of trees. 



Identification of the Cypress, Thuya, 

 AND Juniper 



The less adept, or the less enterprising, or even, 

 if you like so to characterize it, the more idle-minded, 

 are quite content to generalize when they refer 

 to trees, and to sweep into one network of nomen- 

 clature all trees that bear more or less an outward 

 and visible resemblance. Such a system may have 

 its merits from a convenient, but not from an eluci- 

 dating point of view. It is all very well for those 

 who would dance through life, but from those who 

 live in its midst more is expected and more should 

 be forthcoming. 



For instance, the Cypress, the Thuya, and often 

 the Juniper — in a more limited way — display many 

 of such resemblances. They all have similar-looking 

 green branchlets (more or less), columnar or pyramidal 

 habits, and so forth. The name most usually em- 

 ployed by the unversed to designate such trees is 

 Cypress. They are all colloquially alluded to by 

 this one all-embracing name. At the same time, and 

 for many years after the great inundation from 

 America of Thuyas — that is to say, about the middle 

 and latter part of the last century, the name Arbor 

 Vitae was often applied to the same object. This 

 name, in a popular sense, seems to have rather died 

 out of late or become superannuated. 



