IDENTIFICATION OF THE CYPRESS 157 
The Cypress tree is held to be identified with the 
Gopher tree of the Bible. The ark, “ pitched within 
and without,’’ was made of Gopher, and to the wood 
of the C. Sempervirens, or Roman Cypress, in parti- 
cular is accorded the honour of supplying the material 
of its construction. And this is all we propose to 
harrate here concerning a semi-historical, semi-court 
guide, description of this tribe of trees. 
IDENTIFICATION OF THE CYPRESS, THUYA, 
AND JUNIPER 
The less adept, or the less enterprising, or even, 
if you like so to characterize it, the more idle-minded, 
are quite content to generalize when they refer 
to trees, and to sweep into one network of nomen- 
clature all trees that bear more or less an outward 
and visible resemblance. Such a system may have 
its merits from a convenient, but not from an eluci- 
dating point of view. It is all very well for those 
who would dance through life, but from those who 
live in its midst more is expected and more should 
be forthcoming. 
For instance, the Cypress, the Thuya, and often 
the Juniper—in a more limited way—display many 
of such resemblances. They all have similar-looking 
green branchlets (more or less), columnar or pyramidal 
habits, and so forth. The name most usually em- 
ployed by the unversed to designate such trees is 
Cypress. They are all colloquially alluded to by 
this one all-embracing name. At the same time, and 
for many years after the great inundation from 
America of Thuyas—that is to say, about the middle 
and latter part of the last century, the name Arbor 
Vite was often applied to the same object. This 
name; in a popular sense, seems to have rather died 
out of late or become superannuated, 
