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ARBORETUM ANI) FRUTICETUM.
PART III
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houses in New Orleans, in1819, Michaux informs us,were of wood, and not onlythe frame, but the interiorwork and the outer covering,were, in most cases, of cypress.
The shingles made of thiswood are split off parallel tothe concentric circles. AtNorfolk, in Virginia, nearthe Dismal Swamp, immensequantities of shingles are madeboth of this wood and of thatof the white cedar. Through-out the southern states, it isused for the interior fitting upof brick houses, for windowsashes, and panels of doorsexposed to the weather ; andcabinet-makers use it for thedrawers, &c., of mahoganyfurniture. It has been em-ployed, in Louisiana, for themasts and sides of vessels;and is often used for canoes,which, when fashioned from .a single trunk, and about 30 ft. 'long and 5 ft. wide, are light,solid, and more durable thanthose formed of any oth er tree.
It makes excellent and verydurable posts for fences, andpipes to convey water under ground ; particularly the kind grown on dryland, and called the black cypress, the wood of which is more resinous andsolid than that of the white. A resin, of an agreeable odour and red colour,exudes from the bark; but not in sufficient abundance to be used for thepurposes of commerce, though more copious than that of the white cedar:the negroes prefer it to that of the pines for dressing wounds. The protu-berances formed by the roots, as already observed, are used by the negroes asbee-hives. In England, the deciduous cypress is only valued as an ornamentaltree; and the delicacy of its foliage, and the graceful pendent disposition ofits lower branches, insure it a place in every collection where the soil is natu-rally moist, or where it can be planted in the vicinity of water. The nobletrees at Syon and Whitton are admired by all who have seen them. Themost graceful pendent-branched tree which we have seen is that at St. Ann’sHill, already mentioned ; and, in the wood at White Knights, there are abovea score of young trees, so different in their foliage, in the fastigiate, spreading,or pendulous disposition of their branches, and also in the twisted or flattened2-ranked arrangement of the leaves, that each might be considered as a dis-tinct variety.
Soil, Propagation, fyc. A rich moist soil is required to produce the deci-duous cypress of any size, and it will not thrive in elevated situations. Thespecies is increased by seeds, which are procured from imported cones : theymay be treated in all respects like those of the common evergreen cypress,and, like them, come up the first year. The tree may also be propagated bycuttings, put in in autumn, in sand or heath soil, in the shade, and keptmoist; a practice which, Bose observes, is in use in the nurseries at Orleans,but not in those at Paris. Cuttings of the winter’s wood, or of the sum-mer’s shoots with the leaves on, will root in a vessel of water in a very few