trees that are 140 years old, and 75 to 80 feet high, by two feet in diameter or upwards.

With Mr. Crout, a cabinet-maker here, I have seen a small table made from the heart of Red Cedar, which receives an exquisite polish, presents much variety of figure, and is of the most beautiful crimson that can be imagined.

EVERGREEN TAXODIUM.

Natural Order, CUPRESSINE. (Richard.) Linnæan Classification, MONOECIA MONADELPHIA.

TAXODIUM SEMPERVIRENS, foliis perennantibus distichis linearibus acutis coriaceis glabris opacis. LAMBERT'S Pines, (ed. 2,) tab. 64. LOUDON, Arboret. vol. 4, p. 2487, fig. 2340 and 2341. HOOKER and ARNOTT, Bot. Beech. Suppl. p. 392.

CONDYLOCARPUS. Salisbury.

THIS remarkable species, which is said to be evergreen, was discovered by Mr. Menzies on the north-west coast of America in 1796, and immense trees of it were found by Dr. Coulter in 1836.

The leaves are linear, acute, and distichous, coriaceous and smooth, opaque, and shining on both sides, keeled beneath, flat on the margin, half an inch to an inch long, half a line broad and decurrent on the branch. The galbulus (or fruit) is terminal, solitary, roundish, with short imbricated scales at the base, the scales trapezoidal, peltate, thick and woody; rough above, and radiately striated, depressed in the centre, terminating below in a thick angular pedicel. Seeds many to a single scale, angular and yellowish. Probably a different genus from Tuxodium, as conjectured by Salisbury.

It is thus alluded to by Douglas in the Companion to the Botanical Magazine, 2, p. 150. "But the great beauty of

100

EVERGREEN TAXODIUM.

the Californian vegetation is a species of Taxodium, which gives the mountains a most peculiar, I was almost going to say awful, appearance, something which plainly tells that we are not in Europe. I have repeatedly measured specimens of this tree 270 feet long, and 32 feet round at three feet above the ground. Some few I saw upwards of 300 feet high, but none in which the thickness was greater than those I have instanced."

BALD CYPRESS (Taxodium distichum, Cupressus disticha. WILLD.) Doctor G. Engelmann informs me that the most northern station in the west for this tree, is at the mouth of the Ohio, and between Mount Carmel and Vincennes on the Wabash.

ARBOR VITE.

(L'ARBRE DE VIE. FR.)

Natural Order, CUPRESSINE. (Richard.) Linnaan Classifi cation, MONOECIA MONADELPHIA.

THUJA.* (TOURNEFORT.)

MONOECIOUS.-MALE ament terminal, small and ovoid.

Stamens many,

naked, inserted on a common axis, filaments excentrically peltate, loosely imbricated; anthers 4-celled, opening lengthways. FEMALE ament terminal, small; the scales spreading, imbricated in 4 ranks. Ovules a pair at the base of each scale, erect. The strobile formed of imbricated woody scales, each having a reflected mucronate subterminal point. Seeds under each scale 2, with a long or membranaceous testa, on each side winged. The embryo inserted in the axis of a fleshy albumen of its own length: cotyledones 2, oblong; radicle superior.

Sempervirent trees of Asia and North America, with compressed branchlets, clothed with minute compressed and imbricated ovate leaves, with the buds naked.

* Derived from evov sacrifice, in reference to its use in the East.

VOL. III.-14

GIGANTIC ARBOR VITÆ.

THUJA GIGANTEA, (NUTTALL, Plants of Rocky Mountains, p. 5z,)* ramis ramulisque compressis erectis, foliis ovatis acutis arcte quadrifariam imbricatis intermediis convexis puncto impresso etuberculatis, strobilis arcte reflexis. HOOKER, Flor. Bor. Am. 2, p. 165.

THUJA Menziesii. DOUGLAS, MSS.

THUJA plicata. LAMBERT, Pin. No. 61, (in part.)

THIS is one of the most majestic trees west of the Rocky Mountains, attaining the height of 60 to 170 or even 200 feet, and being 20 to 40 feet in the circumference of the trunk. On the shores of the Pacific, where this species is frequent, it nowhere attains the enormous dimensions attributed to it in the fertile valleys of the Rocky Mountains, towards the sources of the Oregon. We seldom saw it along the coast more than 70 to 100 feet in height, still, however, much larger than the common species, (T. occidentalis.) We observed it also on the banks of the Wahlamet, and according to Douglas, it is found north as far as Nootka Sound. It appears to have been also collected by Menzies. The largest trees seen by Captain Wyeth were growing on the alluvial borders of the Flat Head river. Its general aspect is a good deal similar to that of T. occidentalis, but the branches are rounder and more erect, less flattened or ancipital; in their colour they vary, for while some are green others are glaucous. The seeds are elliptic, and furnished with a wide alated margin. The leaves are always destitute of the glandular tubercle conspicuous in

* Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philad. vol. 7.