390 THE SOUTHERN CYPRESS. 



no species has been brought from the South that surpasses 

 it in elegance and beauty. The larch, which is a favorite 

 ornamental tree, will not compare with it, though there 

 is some superficial resemblance between it and the 

 American larch. They are both deciduous ; and their 

 foliage is brighter in the summer than that of other coni- 

 fers. The leaves of the deciduous Cypress are of the most 

 delicate texture, of a light green, and arranged in neat 

 opposite rows, like those of the hemlock, on the slender 

 terminal branches. 



Michaux remarks that the banks of the Indian Eiver, 

 a small stream in Delaware, are the northern boundary 

 of the deciduous Cypress. He says it occupies an area 

 of more than fifteen hundred miles. The largest trees 

 are found in the swamps that contain a deep, miry soil, 

 with a surface of vegetable mould, renewed every year 

 by floods. Some of these trees are " one hundred and 

 twenty feet in height, and from twenty-five to forty feet 

 in circumference at the conical base, which, at the surface 

 of the earth, is always three or four times as large as the 

 continued diameter of the trunk. In felling them the 

 negroes are obliged to raise themselves upon scaffolds five 

 or six feet from the ground. The base is usually hollow 

 for three quarters of its bulk." The conical protuberances 

 for which this tree is remarkable come from the roots 

 of the largest trees, particularly of those in very wet soils. 

 " They are," says Michaux, " commonly from eighteen to 

 twenty-four inches in height, and sometimes from four to 

 five feet in thickness. They are always hollow, smooth on 

 the surface, and covered with a reddish bark like the roots, 

 which they resemble also in the softness of their wood. 

 They exhibit no signs of vegetation, and I have never 

 succeeded in obtaining shoots by wounding their surface 

 and covering them with earth. No cause can be assigned 

 for their existence. They are peculiar to the Cypress, 



