254 CYPKESS TKEES. [CHAP. XXXIV. 



M. W. Dickeson and Mr. A. Brown state, that the 

 cypress brakes or basins, which fill up gradually, give 

 place at length to other timber ; but before this hap 

 pens, the buried cypress stumps often extend through 

 a deposit of vegetable and sedimentary matter 

 twenty-five feet thick. &quot; Sections of such filled-up 

 cypress basins, exposed by the changes in the position 

 of the river, exhibit undisturbed, perfect, and erect 

 stumps, in a series of every elevation with respect to 

 each other, extending from high- water mark down to 

 at least twenty-five feet below, measuring out a time 

 when not less than ten fully-matured cypress growths 

 must have succeeded each other, the average of whose 

 age could not have been less than 400 years, thus 

 making an aggregate of 4000 years since the first 

 cypress tree vegetated in the basin.* There are also 

 instances where prostrate trunks, of huge dimensions, 

 are found imbedded in the clay, immediately over 

 which are erect stumps of trees, numbering no less 

 than 800 concentric layers.&quot; 



Michaud, in his famous work on the forest trees of 

 North America, mentions that stems of this deciduous 

 cypress ( Taxodium distichum) are met with in Florida, 

 and in Southern Louisiana, forty feet in circum 

 ference above the enlarged base, which is three or 

 four times that size ; but such individuals dwindle to 

 nothing before the gigantic trunk near Santa Maria 

 del Tide, in the province of Oaxaca, in Mexico, 

 which was first mentioned by Exter, who found its 

 circumference to be 117 10 French feet. Zuccarini, 



* Silliman s Journal, Second Series, vol. v. p. 17. January, 

 1848. 



