CYPRESS 
115 
color : such at least has been the result of several experiments made in 
Europe. 
The Cypress blooms in Carolina about the first of February. The male 
and female flowers are separately borne by the same tree, the first in flexible 
pendulous aments, and the second in bunches scarcely apparent. The 
cones are about as large as the thumb, hard, round, of an uneven surface, 
and stored with small, irregular, ligneous seeds, containing a cylindrical 
kernel : they are ripe in October, and retain their productive virtue for 
two years. 
The wood is fine-grained, and, after bein'g for some time exposed to the 
light, of a reddish color : it possesses great strength and elasticity, and is 
lighter and less resinous than that of the Pines. To these properties is 
added the faculty of long resisting the heat and moisture of the southern 
climate. The color of the bark and the properties of the wood vary with 
the nature of the soil ; the stocks which grow near the natural bed of the 
rivers, and are half the year surrounded with water to the height of 3 or 
4 feet, have a lighter colored bark than those which stand retired in places 
which the waters do not reach, or where they sojourn but a moment. The 
wood, also, is whiter, less resinous and less heavy. These are called White 
Cypresses. The others, of which the bark is browner and the wood heavier, 
more resinous, and of a duskier hue, are called Black Cypresses. When 
destined to be employed in the arts, both varieties should be felled in the 
winter, and kept, till by a long process, the wood has become perfectly 
dry. A resin of an agreeable odor and a red color, exudes from the 
Cypress ; it is not abundant enough to be collected for commerce, though 
more copious than that of the White Cedar, which is probably the reason of 
the wood’s being denser and stronger : the negroes prefer it to that of the 
Pines as a dressing for suppurating wounds. 
This wood is more generally employed in Louisiana than in any other 
part of the United States : it is profitably substituted for the White Oak 
and the Pine, which are rare, and it is proved to be twice as durable as 
the Pine. Nearly all the houses in New Orleans were of wood, and the 
frame, the interior work and, the outer covering of Cypress. It was almost 
as generally employed in Georgia and the Carolinas soon after their set- 
tlement ; but it is now replaced by other species, as all the large stocks 
have been consumed in the populous districts : near the swamps, where it 
abounds, the houses are still built, or at least covered, with it. Of what- 
ever materials the building is constructed in these States, the roof is 
universally covered with Cypress shingles, which, if made from trees felled 
in the winter, last forty years. They are split off in a direction parallel 
to the concentric circles. At Norfolk in Virginia, near the Dismal 
Swamp, where immense quantities are made both of this species and of 
White Cedar, those of Cypress are preferred ; at Philadelphia and Haiti- 
