20 Onthe Cypress Timber of Mississippi and Louisiana. 
of sound from it, that falling timber often causes a reverberation 
throughout these silent and sombre shades to a distance of ten 
miles. But while the tops of the cypresses are so disproportion- 
ate, it is not so with their roots; for they ramify through the soil 
in every direction extending from fifty to seventy-five feet from 
the body of the parent stems ; some remaining parallel with the 
surface of the ground, whilst others penetrate deep into the 
more consolidated subsoil or under strata of clay; and they are 
thus so fortified that a cypress is rarely torn up from the ground in 
which it grows. The roots which they shoot out horizontally to 
such distances from their trunks, always assume wave-like fierures 
with respect to the horizon ; the most prominent part of the con- 
vex curve rises within a little distance of the surface of the ground, 
and from them projects a series of perpendicular cone shaped protu- 
berances usually called “knees,” which are from three to thirty 
inches in circumference at the base, and rise to a height vary- 
ing from two to ten feet; these knees growing from the innu- 
merable interlacing roots in a dense forest of cypress timber are 
closely crowded together, and resemble (in all but their color) 
the stalagmites on the pavement of some enormous cavern; to 
which a cypress basin, take it all in all, is not unlike. The 
. yon: 
the size of the roots; thence they proceed and terminate up- 
wards, in an obtuse point, from which protrudes neither leaf nor 
limb. ‘Their texture is light spongy or cellular, and by means 
of them, the roots, although totally submerged, have a connec- 
tion with the atmosphere. We suggest that this is the function 
fulfilled hy the knees. The series of roots from which the knees 
project are of different structures and economy from those by 
which the tree is more directly pene They are of much 
the same cellular character with the knees; while the other 
roots are more compact and wots atic penetrate, at every an- 
gle, deep into the more solid material of the morass. When this 
means of communication between the roots and the air, is ren- 
dered inefficacious by the annual overflow of the Fig 
river, raising the water in the swamp-basins above = pa 
their summits, another is provided for in the body 
of the trees themselves. An unusual swelling of 
the butts of the tree takes place, arising from an en- 
largement and continuing up of the. superficial or 
knee-bearing roots. (Fig. 3.) Such enlargements 
never fail to rise to the top of the highest water 
el, and must (in some instances) attain an ele- 
of ast twenty-five feet; so that when 
p the body of the tree to where pores nue hea 
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