305 
THE BEEMUDA JUNIPEE. 
The principal tree of the Bermuda flora is the 
Juniper, which covers the islands and makes the con- 
spicuous featiire of their vegetation. A few other 
trees gTOW naturally on these islands, and several 
others have been carried to them by man and have 
now become more or less firmly established. No tree 
but the Juniper, however, makes much show on the 
islands, which, from a distance, seem to be completely 
covered with it. 
This Juniper has been gTowiug on Bermuda for a 
long time The wood, in the condition of lignite, 
was found at the depth of fifty feet l)elow low-water 
mark during the dredging operations undertaken by 
the British Government in connection with the build- 
ing of the Bermuda dry-dock. Subsidence of land is 
slow unless it is the result of some violent catastrophe, 
hke an earthquake, and the fact that this Juniper 
grew on ground which is now far below the surface 
of the ocean is conclusive evidence that it has 
occcupied these islands for a period so long that the 
mind of man, accustomed to measure time by 
years or by centuries, cannot form a clear notion 
of its immensity. 
How did the Juniper first get to Bermuda ? By 
what process did this tree, which is unlike other trees 
of its kind, first appear on these minute islands re- 
mote from all other land, and raised from the bed 
of the ocean by the patient toil of insects, long after 
the neighbouring continent had assumed very nearly 
its present aspect ? These are questions which pre- 
sent themselves to the student of nature as he sails 
into the harbour- of Hamilton and sees the low islands 
about him everywhere clothed with this peculiar tree. 
It was not a case of separate creation, for the idea 
of the old philosophers, that plants and animals were 
created as they now appear in the different parts 
of the world where they occur, is no longer tenable. 
Man certainly did not bring the Juniper to Bermuda, 
for it is not quite four hundred years yet since man 
first saw these islands ; and it is not improbable that 
trees are still standing which were growing when J uan 
Bermudez sighted the islands which Oviedo, the first 
naturalist to write on the New World, and a passen- 
ger with Bermudez on his ship "La Garza," described 
as " the most remote of all the islands yet found in the 
world." 
Fifty years ago these questions would not haye been 
easy to answer. Now the light which Darwin and 
Hooker and "Wallace and other naturalists, working on 
the lines laid down by Darwin, have thrown on the origin 
of insular floras makes it easy to find a simple and, 
probably, a correct solution of the presence of the 
Juniper on tlie Bermuda islands. There is a Juniper 
in North America growii-ig in nearly all parts of the 
continent, from Canada to Florida, and from Cape Cod 
to Vancouver's Island ; this is our so-called Red Cedar 
(Juniperus Viryimana), a tree which, in all important 
respects, is very similar to the Bermuda tree. It is 
a well-known fact that several of om- birds are very 
fond of the berries of the Red Cedar and devour them 
in large quantities. To this is due the fact that this 
tree is so generally scattered and multiplied tlirongh 
the country, as birds void the hard stone-like seeds 
without injuring their vitahty, and so spread them far 
and wide. There is evidence enough that our Red 
Cedar was growing on tliis continent long before Ber- 
muda rose above the surface of the ocean ; and a bird, 
with his crop full of Cedar-berries, may have been 
bio wn oil from the mainland and found a resting-place 
on tlio tlion barren coral rocks, where the seeds he 
had Ijrought found conditions which favored their ger- 
mination. Our continental birds, in several species, 
now visit l^crmuda every year in considerable num- 
bers, and tills habit must have had its origin in accident. 
Tho Red Cedar once established in Bermuda, it is easy 
to 1 magine that the climate and soil conditions of its 
new environment would gradiuUly change its appear- 
ance, just as all plants are gradually modilied by the 
influences of their surroundings; and that in time, after 
3'J 
the lapse of countless years, that it woiild take on its 
present axipearance and stand for what naturalists call 
a species, that is, a modified or differentiated form of 
some other form or species. And, after all, the differ- 
ences which distinguish the continental Juniper from 
its insular descendant are not very great. The bran- 
ches of the island tree have grown stouter and tougher 
through their long struggles against the ocean gales ; 
the roots have learned the secret of holding on to bare 
rocks or of penetrating deep into their interstices. 
The foliage has lost its dark green tints and is now 
a pale blue-gray. The leaves are blunter and are 
furnished on the back with a gland or resin duct. The 
fruit is somewhat larger, and the heartwood is not so 
bright a red and is rather less fragiunt than that of 
the Red Cedar. 
An interesting thing about the Bermuda Cedar is its 
ability to grow apparently equally well in different 
situations. It flourishes on the dry porous limestone- 
hills and grows as freely on the brackish swamp-lands 
which occur in some parts of the islands. It is not 
unusual to find trees of a wide geographical range, and 
therefore subject to different climate surroundings, 
which seek to adapt themselves to them by selecting 
situations which in one region are at the sea-level 
and in others are at the top of high mountains. Many 
conifers which grow at the north at the sea-level 
are found in the south only at considerable elevations 
above the Ocean ; and the Red Cedar itself, which 
grows at the north on high dry uplands, inhabits, 
in Florida, swamps which are inundated dm-ing a 
considerable part of the year, and in the dry climate 
of the western part of the continent occui's only at 
high elevations. But the Bermuda Cedar grows as 
well in one place as it does in another, although 
climatic conditions do not, of course, differ percep- 
tibly in dift'ei-eut parts of this small group of islands. 
Large individuals are no longer common ; the axe 
of the wood-cutter and the ship-builder long ago swept 
tliem away. Here and there a venerable trunk may 
still be found, but among the large trees still growing 
on the island very few probably are much more than 
a century old or are large enough to possess any great 
commercial value. Formerly the wood was much used 
in ship-building ; and it is interesting to note that 
Henry May, an English sailor, who was wrecked on 
the Bermuda Islands in 1593, and who afterward print- 
ed the first account of them, escaped with his 
companions to the bank's- of Newfoundland in a vessel 
which they were able to make from the Cedar- wood. 
This same wood, twenty-seven years later, furnished 
the material from which Admiral Sir George 
Somers, who the year before had been wrecked 
while in command of the " Sea Adventure " on the 
islands, constructed the vessel which carried him to 
the relief of the infant colony of Virginia, and in 
which his body was afterward borne back to his 
native land. Beautiful and very lasting furniture, 
too, was once made on the islands from the Cedar- 
wood, and old cedar chests and cabinets 200 years old 
and more are still held as heirlooms by the descen- 
dants of some old Bermuda families who still live in 
houses finished with this wood, which grows with 
age rich and dark in color like old mahogany. 
Two portraits of Bermuda Cedars are printed in this 
issue. That on page 27-1 represents the stem of a very' 
old tree standing in the Devonshire churchyard close 
by the ivy-covered parish chiu'ch, which resembles in- 
architecture and sm-roundings one of the little churches 
of the older Devonshire. The tree, which recalls one 
of those venerable Yews of England, hoary with age, 
and familiar inhabitants of many an English cliiu'chyard, 
probably led to the selection of this particular spot as 
a place of worship. The tree must have been a very 
old and large one when the little cluu'ch was built ; 
it may well have been standing when human eyes 
rested on these islands for the first time, and probably 
it has changed very little in the last 200 years. The 
diameter of the trunk is now fifty-nine inches, and the 
height of the tree is some forty feet. Only two larger 
specimens are now known to e.xtst. 
The second view represents the tree as it grows in 
the moist black soil of the Devonshire marshes, a large 
tract of gi'ound covered with Cedars of large size and 
springing from a dense undergrowth of Was Myrtle, 
