. TAXODIUM DISTICHUM. 
7 
remains at his disposal having enabled him to examine and identify every part of the plant. It is very 
close to the Taxodium distichum of the present day, and was widely distributed in the tertiary epoch, 
especially in the middle and upper Miocene. It has been met with in tertiary formations at Schossnetz, 
near Breslau, by Professor Goeppert; at Assingen, in Switzerland, by Professor Heer; and in the 
south of France (Armissan and Peyrac) by M. Gaston de Saporta. 
Whether that species be really distinct from the Taxodium distichum or not, there is no doubt that 
fossil remains of the latter are abundant in the quaternary or recent deposits of the marshy districts in which 
it now lives. It there grows directly above the remains of the same species entombed in the deposits of 
clay and mud on which it stands. The shifting and encroachments of the Mississippi on either side are 
constantly sapping away the banks; and as they fall in under the force of the current, the exposed strata of 
mud shew successive growths of these and other trees at different heights in the clayey cliff. Sir Charles 
Lyell, in his “ Second Visit to the United States,” vol. ii. p. 192, tells us that in certain places where the 
bank of the Mississippi consisted of fine stiff clay, he saw here and there the buried stools of Cypresses and 
other trees in an upright position, with their roots attached, sometimes repeated at several different levels in the 
face of the same bank. He adds the following explanation of this curious fact:—“ Suppose,” says he, “ an 
antient bed of the Mississippi, or some low part of the plain, to become fit for the growth of the Cypress, 
yet to be occasionally flooded so that the soil is slowly raised by fine mud, drift wood, or vegetable matter 
like peat. As the Cypress often attains to the age of three or four centuries, and, according to many 
accounts, occasionally, in Louisiana, to that of two thousand years, it is clear that the bottoms of the oldest 
trees will often be enveloped in soil several feet deep before they die and rot down to the point where they 
have been covered up with mud. In the meantime, other trees will have begun to grow on adjoining spots 
at different and considerably higher levels, and eventually some of these will take root in soil deposited 
directly over the stump or decayed trunk of some of the first or oldest series of Cypresses. They who 
have studied the delta affirm that such successive growths of trees are repeated through a perpendicular 
height of 25 feet, without any change occurring in the level of the land.” 
Dr M. W. Dickeson and Mr A. Brown, in speaking of the same subject, say that the Cypress brakes 
or basins, which fill up gradually, give place at length to other lumber ; but, before this happens, the buried 
Cypress stumps often extend through a deposit of vegetable and sedimentary matter 25 feet thick. “ Sections 
of such filled-up Cypress basins, exposed by the changes in the position of the river, exhibit undisturbed, 
perfect, and erect stumps, in a series of every elevation with respect to each other, extending from high- 
water mark down to at least 25 feet below, measuring out a time when not less than ten fully-matured 
Cypress growths must have succeeded each other, the average of whose age could not have been less than 
400 years, thus making an aggregate of 4000 years since the first Cypress tree vegetated in the basin. 
There are also instances where prostrate trunks of huge dimensions are found embedded in the clay, 
immediately over which are erect stumps of trees, numbering no less than 800 concentric layers.” 
These gentlemen also state that at the bottom of all the Cypress swamps or brakes there is found 
a peculiar layer of tenacious blue clay, which forms the foundation or floor on which the vegetable 
• 
matter accumulates. Sir C. Lyell concludes, therefore, that as the roots of the Cypress penetrate 
far beneath the soil, and project horizontally far and wide, those of one tree interlacing with another, 
such root-bearing beds of argillaceous loam would be very analogous to what are called fire clays, so well 
mt- 
known to the geologist, as occurring underneath almost every seam of coal in the antient carboniferous 
rocks. 
Dr Bennet Dowler, of New Orleans, also, as quoted by Dr Seeman in his “ Botany of the Voyage 
of H.M.S. Herald,” p. 335, from an investigation of the successive growths of Cypress forests around 
that city (the stumps of which are still found at different depths directly over-lying each other), from the 
great size and age of the trees, and from the remains of Indian bones and pottery found below the roots 
of some of these stumps, arrived at the conclusion that the human race existed in the delta of the 
[ 30 ] e Mississippi 
