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RED CEDAR. 
Juniperus virginiana. J. foliis ternis, basi adnatis, junioribus imbricatis, 
senioribus patulis. 
The Red Cedar, which belongs to the Junipers, is the most common 
species of its genus in the United States, and the only one which attains 
such dimensions as to be useful in the arts. Next to that which grows in 
Bermuda, it is the largest hitherto discovered. According to my father’s 
observations on the topography of American plants, Cedar Island, in Lake 
Champlain, nearly opposite to Burlington, in latitude 44° 25', may be 
assumed as one of the remotest points at which it is found towards the 
north. Eastward, on the border of the sea, I have not seen it beyond 
Wiscasset, a small town of the District of Maine, at the mouth of the 
Kennebeck, and in nearly the same latitude with Burlington. Erom Wis- 
casset it spreads without interruption to the Cape of Florida, and thence 
round the Gulf of Mexico to a distance beyond St. Bernard’s Bay ; an 
extent of more than 3,000 miles. In retiring from the shore, it becomes 
gradually less common and less vigorous, and in Virginia and the more 
Southern States it is rare at the point where the tide ceases to flow in the 
rivers ; further inland it is seen only in the form of a shrub in open, dry, 
sandy places. In the Western States it is confined to spots where the 
calcareous rock shows itself naked, or is so thinly covered with mould as to 
forbid the vegetation of other trees. 
Though the Red Cedar grows naturally in the District of Maine, and on 
some of the islands of Lake Champlain, it is repressed by a winter as 
intense as that of the north of Germany, and develops itself less vigor- 
ously than in Virginia, and further south, where the soil and climate are 
favorable to its expansion and to the perfection of its wood. Upon the 
downs it is usually buried in the sand cast up by the waves, except the 
summit of the branches, which appear like young trees above the surface. 
When unincumbered with sand, as in the middle of the islands and on the 
borders of the narrow sounds that flow between them and the main, it is 
40 or 45 feet in height and 12 or 13 inches in diameter ; but it would be 
difficult at present to find stocks of this size north-eastward of the river 
St. Mary within the ancient limits of the United States. 
The foliage i3 evergreen, numerously subdivided, and composed of small 
