CYPRESS. Tctxodlum. Of the varieties of the Taxodium, natives of the 'United States and Mexico, it will only be necessary to mention the Deciduous Cypress, or Bald Cypress of the Southern States, which occasionally is found growing as far as 39° North. It assumes, like the elm, many distinct forms and is known by a variety of names, the lighter colored wood being locally known as White Cypress, and the darker wooded as Black Cypress. The varieties are mostly sports, some of which, however, perpet uate themselves from seed. The thnber of the Bald Cypress (Taxodi um distielatin) is one of the most valuable of the timber trees in the Southern States, comprising vast districts of swamp, from Maryland to Florida, Louisiana and along the rivers to Missouri and Illinois, growing in rich, alluvial lands South, often to a height of 120 feet, supported upon an immense trunca,ted base, which has, after the tree reaches a height of thirty or forty feet, curious appendages known as cypress knees, and used by the natives as bee hives. The wood is soft, fine grained, elastic, strong, and exceedingly durable; this last quality equaled by few trees, making it valualle for timber, lumber, and especially for shingles. The following graphic account is given of this noble southern tree in the North Ameri can Sylva . In the swamps of the Southern States and the Fioridas, on whose deep, miry soil a new layer of vegetable mould is deposited every year by the floods, the Cypress attains its utmost development. The largest stocks are
120 feet in height, and from twenty five to forty feet in circumference above the conical base, which, at the surface of the earth, is always three or four times as large as the continued diameter of the trunk. The roots of the largest stocks, particularly of such as are most exposed to inundation, are charged with conical protuberances, commonly from eighteen to twenty four inches, and sometimes four or five feet in thickness; these are always hol low, smooth on the surface, and cov ered with a reddish bark, like the roots, which they resemble also in the softness of their wood, and they ex hibit no sign of vegetation. The foli age is open, light, and of a fresh, agreeable tint; each leaf is four or five inches long, and consists of two par allel rows of leaflets, upon a common stem. The leaflets are small, fine, and somewhat arching, with the con vex side outwards. In the autumn they change from a light green to a dull red, and are shed quite soon after. The Cypress blooms in Carolina about the first of February.
The roale and fernale flowers are borne sepa rately, by the same tree; the first in flexible, pen dulous aments, and the second in bunches, scarcely apparent. The cones are about as large as the thumb, hard, round, of an uneven surface,