WHITE CEDAR. 
119 
skirts. Further south, it is mingled with the Cypress, by which it is at 
length entirely supplanted. In Lower Jersey and Maryland, the swamps 
are accessible only during the dryest part of the summer and when they 
are frozen in the winter. The trees stand so thick in them that the light 
can hardly penetrate the foliage, and in their gloomy shade spring at 
every step tufts of the Dwarf Rose Bay, Honeysuckle and Andromeda, 
whose luxuriant vegetation proves that they delight in dark and humid 
exposures. 
The White Cedar is 70 or 80 feet high, and rarely more than 3 feet in 
diameter, unless, perhaps, in the great swamps which have not been tho- 
roughly explored, such as the Dismal Swamp near Norfolk in Virginia, 
which is covered with this species and the Cypress. When the White 
Cedars are close and compressed, the trunk is straight, perpendicular, and 
destitute of branches to the height of 50 or 60 feet ; they are observed to 
choose the centre of the swamps, and the Cypresses the circumference. 
The epidermis is very thin on the young stocks ; but as they grow older 
it becomes thick, of a soft filaceous texture, of a reddish color, and similar 
to that of an old Vine. When cut, a yellow transparent resin of an agree- 
able odor exudes, of which a few ounces could hardly be collected in a 
summer from a tree of 3 feet in circumference. 
The foliage is evergreen ; each leaf is a little branch numerously sub- 
divided, and composed of small, acute, imbricated scales, on the back of 
which a minute gland is discerned with the lens. In the angle of these 
ramifications grow the flowers, which are scarcely visible and which pro- 
duce very small rugged cones of a greenish tint, which changes to bluish 
towards the fall, when they open to release the fine seeds. 
The concentric circles are always perfectly distinct, even in stocks of 
considerable size, but their number and compactness prove that the tree 
arrives at its full growth only after a long lapse of years. I have counted 
277 annual layers in a trunk 21 inches in diameter and 5 feet from the 
ground, and 47 in a plant only 8 inches thick at the surface, which proved 
it to be already fifty years old. I was told that the swamp in which it 
grew had been burnt at least half a century before, and had been re-peo- 
pled from a few stocks that escaped the conflagration, or perhaps by the 
seeds of the preceding year. 
The wood is light, soft, fine-grained, and easily wrought. When per- 
fectly seasoned, and exposed for some time to the light, it is of a rosy hue. 
It has a strong aromatic odor, which it preserves as long as it is guarded 
from humidity. The perfect wood resists the succession of dryness and 
moisture longer than that of any other species, and for this quality princi- 
pally, as well as its extreme lightness, it is preferred at Baltimore and 
Philadelphia for shingles, which are cut transversely to the concentric 
circles, and not parallel like those of the Cypress. They are from 24 to 
