114 
CYPRESS. 
savannas is seen here and there a bog or a plash of water filled with 
Cypresses, whose squalid appearance, when they exceed 18 or 20 feet in 
height, proves how much they are affected by the barrenness of a soil which 
differs from the surrounding waste only by a layer of vegetable mould a 
little thicker upon the quartzy sand. From these particulars, a sufficiently 
just idea may be formed of the geographical situations and of the soil in 
which the Cypress is found, over an extent of more than 1,500 miles, from 
its first appearance toward the north to the Mississippi. Toward the 
south-west my information does not reach beyond Louisiana, though I have 
some reason to believe that it is seen as far as the mouth of the river Del 
Norte, latitude 26°, which, if we measure the circuit of the Gulf of Mexico, 
makes a distance of more than 3,000 miles. 
M. de Humboldt, in his interesting account of New Spain, mentions 
several trees of this species in the ancient gardens of the Emperor of 
Mexico, which were planted before the arrival of the Spaniards, and are 
now of considerable size. 
In the swamps of the Southern States and the Floridas, on whose deep 
miry soil a new layer of vegetable mould is every year deposited by the 
floods, the Cypress attains its utmost development. The largest stocks are 
120 feet in height, and from 25 to 40 feet in circumference above the 
conical base, which, at the surface of the earth, is always three or four 
times as large as the continued diameter of the trunk : in felling them, the 
negroes are obliged to raise themselves upon scaffolds 5 or 6 feet from the 
ground. The base is usually hollow for three-quarters of its bulk, and is 
less regularly shaped than that of the Large Tupelo. Its surface is longi- 
tudinally furrowed with deep channels, whose ridges serve as cramps to fix 
it more firmly in the loose soil. The roots of the largest stocks, particu- 
larly of such as are most exposed to inundation, are covered with conical 
protuberances, commonly from 18 to 24 inches, and sometimes 4 or 5 feet 
in thickness ; they are always hollow, smooth on the surface, and covered 
with a reddish bark like the roots, which they resemble, also, in the softness 
of their wood; they exhibit no sign of vegetation, and I have never suc- 
ceeded in obtaining shoots by wounding their surface and covering them 
with earth. No cause can be assigned for their existence ; they are pecu- 
liar to the Cypress, and begin to appear when it is 20 or 25 feet in height ; 
they are not made use of except by the negroes for bee-hives. The summit 
of the Cypress is not pyramidal like that of the Spruces, but is widely 
spread and even depressed upon old trees. The foliage is open, light, and 
of a fresh agreeable tint ; each leaf is 4 or 5 inches long, and consists of 
two parallel rows of leaflets upon a common stem. The leaflets are small, 
fine, and somewhat arching, with the convex side outwards. In the autumn 
they change from a light green to a dull red, and are shed soon after. 
Boiled during three hours in water, they afford a fine durable cinnamon 
