2486 



AKB<iKKTUM AND FRUTICETUiM. 



PAUT III, 



houses in New Orleans, in 

 1819,"rMichaux informs us, 

 were of wood, and not only 

 the frame, but the interior 

 work and the outer covering, 

 were, in most cases, of cypress. 

 The shingles made of this 

 wood are split off parallel to 

 the concentric circles. At 

 Norfolk, in Virginia, near 

 the Dismal Swamp, immense 

 quantities of shingles are made 

 both of this wood and of that 

 of the white cedar. Through- 

 out the southern states, it is 

 used for the interior fitting up 

 of brick houses, for window 

 sashes, and panels of doors 

 exposed to the weather ; and 

 cabinet-makers use it for the 

 drawers, &c., of mahogany 

 furniture. It has been em- 

 ployed, in Louisiana, for the 

 masts and sides of vessels; 

 and is often used for canoes, 

 which, when fashioned from 

 a single trunk, and about 30 ft. 

 long and 5 ft. wide, are light, 

 solid, and more durable than 

 those formed of any other tree. 

 It makes excellent and very 

 durable posts for fences, and 

 pipes to convey water under ground ; particularly the kind grown on dry 

 land, and called the black cypress, the wood of which is more resinous and 

 solid than that of the white. A resin, of an agreeable odour and red colour, 

 exudes from the bark; but not in sufficient abundance to be used for the 

 purposes of commerce, though more co|>ious than that of the white cedar : 

 the negroes prefer it to that of the pines for dressing wounds. The protu- 

 berances formed by the roots, as already observed, are used by the negroes as 

 bee-hives. In England, the deciduous cypress is only valued as an ornaiiiental 

 tree ; and the delicacy of its foliiige, and the graceful pendent di£position of 

 its lower branches, insure it a place in every collection where the soil is natu- 

 rally moist, or where it can be planted in the vicinity of water. The noble 

 trees at Syon and Whitton are admired by all who have seen them. The 

 most graceful pendent-branched tree which we have seen is that at St. Ann's 

 Hill, already mentioned ; and, in the wood at White Knights, there are above 

 a score of young trees, so different in their foliage, in the fastigiate, spreading, 

 or pendulous disposition of their branches, and also in the twisted or flattened 

 2-ranked arrangement of the leaves, that each might be considered as a dis- 

 tinct variety. 



Soil, Propagation, ^c. A rich moist soil is required to produce the deci- 

 duous cypress of any size, and it will not thrive in elevated situations. The 

 species is increased by seeds, which are procured from imported cones : they 

 may be treated in all respects like those of the common evergreen cypress, 

 and, like them, come up the first year. The tree may also be propagated by 

 cuttings, put in in autumn, in sand or heath soil, in the shade, and kept 

 moist; a practice which, Bosc observes, is in use in the nurseries at Orleans, 

 but not in those at Paris. Cuttings of the winter's wood, or of the sum- 

 mer's shoots with the leaves on, will root in a vessel of water in a very few 



