The general hue of the foliage is light yellowish green,
warmly tinted, golden and bead tipped, with tiny, oblong male catkins,
as the fruit ripens in October and November. The cones are pendulous
from the tips of twigs, oblong, and seldom over three-quarters of an
inch long, little more than one-third as thick, and for the most part a
trifle compressed. The wood is a pale cream-tint in color--a delicate
salmon shade. This would hardly warrant the name white cedar, sometimes
applied to it, as well as the giant arborvitae. The extreme lightness of
the lumber and its sweetness for packing boxes will commend it for
express and commercial purposes, for posts and fencing, and especially
railway ties, for sleepers, stringers, and ground timbers of all
varieties, and for unnumbered uses, a tithe of which cannot be told in a
brief notice. Formerly these trees were cut away and burned up, to clear
the track for redwood, tamarack, and ponderous pith-pines, etc.; now all
else is superseded by this incense cedar. Thus is seen how hasty and
ill-advised notions give place to genuine merit.
A fungus (_daedalus_) attacks and honeycombs it; and riddled as it may
occasionally be, still, if spike or nail finds substance enough to hold,
or sufficient solidity to resist crushing, then, for many purposes, even
such lumber is practically as good as the soundest timber; because when
the tree dies the fungus dies, and thenceforth will absorb no more
moisture than the soundest part, and is alike imperishable, contrary to
common experience in similar cases.
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