‘*The White Cedar grows only in wet grounds. In 
the maritime districts of New Jersey, Maryland, and 
Virginia, it nearly fills the extensive marshes which lie 
adjacent to the salt-meadows and are exposed in high 
tides to be overflowed by the sea. In New Jersey it 
covers alinost alone the whole surface of the swamps, of 
which the Tupelo and Red Maple occupy the skirts. 
Farther south, it is mingled with the Cypress, by which 
it is at length entirely supplanted. In Lower Jersey and 
and Maryland, the swamps are accessible only during 
the dryest part of the summer and when they are frozen 
in 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 vegeta- 
tion proves that they delight in dark and humid expo- 
sures. 
The White Cedar is seventy or eighty feet high, and 
rarely more than three feet in diameter, unless, perhaps, 
in the great swamps which have not been thoroughly 
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 com- 
pressed, the trunk is straight, perpendicular, and desti- 
tute of branches to the height of fifty or sixty feet: they 
are observed to choose the center of the swamps, and 
the Cypresses the circumference.” 
Michx, N. Am. Sylva 3: 163. (transl. by J. J. Smith.) 
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