170 CYPRESSES AND JUNIPERS 



enough to create dismay amongst the ranks of the 

 most undaunted of tree-history students. Like the 

 historic miller of the Dee, he begins to feel he cares 

 for none of them, " no, not he.'* 



What there is in the organism of their nature that 

 permits this unfaithfulness to tradition, and allows 

 them licence to produce all this confusion in growth 

 and consequent confusion of mind in our midst, we 

 hazard no explanation. The tree certainly seems to 

 assume as many shapes as a genie in an Arabian 

 Night story. Scientists, when they speak of it, call 

 it polymorphous, and in tones of apology, or some- 

 times, in tones of appreciative satisfaction, refer to 

 the vagaries of descent that this tree offers to the 

 world at large and the Mendelian world in particular. 



Some of these freaks in descent — so reads their 

 unstable history — are columnar, some fastigiate, 

 some pendulous, some spreading, some dwarf, in 

 habit. But this is not all ; of the coloured varieties, 

 some are globose, some are plumose, and the rest of 

 them are too many in number and too various of 

 nature to narrate of further here. One immoral 

 lesson to be learnt from their multitudinous ubiquity 

 is, that the venturesome man, minded to pose as 

 bene docius upon questions of tree lore, has only, 

 when in doubt upon any Cypress identity, to answer 

 Lawson. Not invariably, but on many occasions 

 he will be quite apt to have answered correctly. And 

 your assurance will be relying on firmer foundations 

 if 3^ou have made sure of the existence of those white 

 linings on the under-side leaves that we have called 

 attention to. 



A rather curious translation of the Greek word 

 Kvirpo^ occurs in Liddell and Scott's celebrated Greek 

 Lexicon, which made a first apparition in 1845 "as a 

 tree growing in Cyprus, now called Lawsonia Alba." 



The date of the introduction of our Cypress in 



