CY-PRÈS (A.-Fr. for “so near”), in English law, a principle adopted by the court of chancery in dealing with trusts for charitable purposes. When the charitable purpose intended by a testator cannot be carried into effect, the court will apply the funds to some other purpose, as near the original as possible (whence the name). For instance, a testator having left a fund to be divided into four parts—one-fourth to be used for “the redemption of British slaves in Turkey and Barbary,” and the other three-fourths for various local charities—it was found that there were no British slaves in Turkey or Barbary, and as to that part of the gift therefore the testator’s purpose failed. Instead of allowing the portion of the fund devoted to this impossible purpose to lapse to the next of kin, the court devoted it to the purposes specified for the rest of the estate. This doctrine is only applied where “a general intention of charity is manifest” in the will, and not where one particular object only was present to the mind of the testator. Thus, a testator having left money to be applied in building a church in a particular parish, and that having been found to be impossible, the fund will not be applied cy-près, but will go to the next of kin.
In the United States, charitable trusts have become more frequent as the wealth of the country has progressed, and are regarded with increasing favour by the courts. The cy-près doctrine has been either expressly or virtually applied to uphold them in several of the states, and in some there has been legislation in the same direction. In others the doctrine has been repudiated, e.g. in Michigan, Tennessee, Indiana and Virginia. For many years the New York courts held that this doctrine was not in force there, but in 1893 the legislature repealed the provisions of the revised statutes on which these decisions rested and restored the ancient law. Statutes passed in Pennsylvania have established the doctrine there, and dissolved any doubt as to its being in force in that state.
CYPRESS (Cupressus), in botany, a genus of fifteen species belonging to the tribe Cupressineae, natural order Coniferae, represented by evergreen aromatic trees and shrubs indigenous to the south of Europe, western Asia, the Himalayas, China, Japan, north-western and north-eastern America, California and Mexico. The leaves of the cypresses are scale-like, overlapping and generally in four rows; the female catkins are roundish, and fewer than the male; the cones consist of from six to ten peltate woody scales, which end in a curved point, and open when the seeds are ripe; the seeds are numerous and winged. All the species exude resin, but no turpentine.
C. sempervirens, the common cypress, has been well known throughout the Mediterranean region since classic times; it may have been introduced from western Asia where it is found wild. It is a tapering, flame-shaped tree resembling the Lombardy poplar; its branches are thickly covered with small, imbricated, shining-green leaves; the male catkins are about 3 lines in length; the cones are between 1 and 1½ in. in diameter, sessile, and generally in pairs, and are made up of large angular scales, slightly convex exteriorly, and with a sharp point in the centre. In Britain the tree grows to a height of 40 ft., in its native soil to 70 or 90 ft. It thrives best on a dry, deep, sandy loam, on airy sheltered sites at no great elevation above the sea. It was introduced into Great Britain before the middle of the 16th century. In the climate of the south of England its rate of growth when young is between 1 and 1½ ft. a year. The seeds are sown in April, and come up in three or four weeks; the plants require protection from frost during their first winter.
The timber of the cypress is hard, close-grained, of a fine reddish hue, and very durable. Among the ancients it was in request for poles, rafters, joists, and for the construction of wine-presses, tables and musical instruments; and on that account was so valuable that a plantation of cypresses was considered a sufficient dowry for a daughter. Owing to its durability the wood was employed for mummy cases, and images of the gods; a statue of Jupiter carved out of cypress is stated by Pliny to have existed 600 years without showing signs of decay. The cypress doors of the ancient St Peter’s at Rome, when removed by Eugenius IV., were about 1100 years old, but nevertheless in a state of perfect preservation. Laws were engraved on cypress by the ancients, and objects of value were preserved in receptacles made of it; thus Horace speaks of poems levi servanda cupresso.
The cypress, which grows no more when once cut down, was regarded as a symbol of the dead, and perhaps for that reason was sacred to Pluto; its branches were placed by the Greeks and Romans on the funeral pyres and in the houses of their departed friends. Its supposed ill-boding nature is alluded to in Shakespeare’s Henry VI., where Suffolk desires for his enemies “their sweetest shade, a grove of cypress trees.” The cypress was the tree into which Cyparissus, a beautiful youth beloved by Apollo, was transformed, that he might grieve to all time (Ovid, Met. x. 3). In Turkish cemeteries the cypress—
| “Dark tree, still sad when others’ grief is fled, The only constant mourner o’er the dead”— |
is the most striking feature, the rule being to plant one for each interment. The tree grows straight, or nearly so, and has a gloomy and forbidding, but wonderfully stately aspect. With advancing age its foliage becomes of a dark, almost black hue. William Gilpin calls the cypress an architectural tree: “No Italian scene,” says he, “is perfect without its tall spiral form, appearing as if it were but a part of the picturesquely disposed edifices which rise from the middle ground against the distant landscape.” The cypress of Somma, in Lombardy, is believed to have been in existence in the time of Julius Caesar; it is about 121 ft. in height, and 23 ft. in circumference. Napoleon, in making the road over the Simplon, deviated from the straight line in order to leave it standing. The cypress, as the olive, is found everywhere in the dry hollows and high eastern slopes of Corfu, of the scenery of which it is characteristic. As an ornamental tree in Britain the cypress is useful to break the outline formed by round-headed low shrubs and trees. The berosh, or beroth, of the Hebrew Scriptures, translated “fir” in the authorized version, in 1 Kings v. 8 and vi. 15, 2 Chron. ii. 8 and many other passages, is supposed to signify the cypress.