I. 5. THE ARBOR VITA. 97 
trunk it is difficult to procure sticks of considerable length and 
a uniform diameter; hence, in Maine, it is little employed for 
the frame of houses and still less for the covering. It is softer 
than white pine, and gives a weaker hold to nails, for which 
reason the Canadians always join with it some more solid 
wood.”* It is most commonly used for fences, in which the 
posts, set in clayey land, last thirty-five or forty years, and 
the rails last sixty. It is also used in Canada for the light 
frame of bark canoes. Its twigs are formed into brooms, which 
exhale an agreeable aromatic odor. 
Michaux says that his father, in 1792, found the mission- 
house built by the Jesuits near lake Chicoutomé, in latitude 
45°, of square beams of this wood, laid one upon another, 
without covering on either side, remaining perfectly sound after 
more than sixty years. 
Dr. Richardson found this tree from Lake Huron to the Sas- 
katchawan. 
The smaller branches are of a yellowish brown color, regu- 
larly set with opposite, scale-like. adhering leaves, with the mar- 
gins and point slightly projecting. ‘whe leaves are evergreen, 
arranged in four rows. in alternately opposite pairs. completely 
investing and seeming to make up the fan-like branchlets. 
They are scale-like, marked with a projecting gland below the 
point, each lower pair embracing and covering the base of the 
pair above. The branchlets which they cover are arranged in 
a single plane, asif they were parts of a large compound, flat, 
pinnate leaf. These planes are variously inclined to the hori- 
zon, often vertical, and form the striking peculiarity of this pic- 
turesque tree. 
The male and female flowers are on different parts of the 
same plant. The male flowers are very minute, four or six 
in number, in alternately opposite pairs, forming, together, a 
small terminal ament, one-twelfth part of an mech long, on a 
very short footstalk. Hach flower consists of a roundish shield- 
like scale, protecting two, three, or four anthers. The female 
flowers consist of six to twelve reddish, dark-pointed scales, on 
* Sylva, IIT, 229. 
14 
