214 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



space below the branches. The branches are numerous and 

 small, of a very dark purple, looking black at a distance, in con- 

 trast with the white trunk, and conspicuously spotted with oval, 

 horizontal, gray dots. The recent shoots are brown, closely dot- 

 ted with round dots, and, in the next year, often scattered with 

 white scales. The leaves are on long slender footstalks, trian- 

 gular or heater-shaped, rounded or right-angled, or heart-shaped 

 at base, ending in a long tapering point, irregularly toothed, the 

 larger teeth having an abrupt sharp point, shining on both sur- 

 faces, and glutinous when young. In autumn, they fade to a 

 rich yellow. 



The male flowers are on cylindrical, brownish-yellow, pendu- 

 lous catkins, usually single at the end of the branches, three 

 inches long. The larger scale is shield-like, the next two rounded, 

 the inner three inversely egg-shaped, all fringed ; the former three 

 brown, the latter yellowish. The fertile flowers are in smaller 

 and more slender, erect, lateral' catkins, with green scales. The 

 stigmas are shorter than in the other species, and the catkins 

 thence look smoother. When mature, the anient becomes a cyl- 

 indrical strobile, an inch or more long, and two or three eighths 

 thick, on a footstalk three eighths of an inch long. 



The white birch is valuable for the rapidity with which it 

 grows on any kind of soil, or even without soil. It makes a 

 pleasant border for the road, — infinitely better than none. I have 

 found myself sensibly relieved, in a walk on a sunny afternoon, 

 by the thin shade of low dwarf birches, which had sprung up 

 by the road side. In twelve or fourteen years, it grows to its 

 usual height of twenty or twenty-five feet, and in this way bet- 

 ter than in any other, can a profit be derived from otherwise 

 useless land. It makes tolerable fuel, less valuable doubtless 

 than the wood of most other deciduous trees, and ranking with 

 that of the evergreens, but answering well, for the common 

 purposes of the kitchen, for more than half the year. But it 

 grows on poor land, where scarcely anything else will, and on 

 good land in a shorter time than any other tree, as on good land 

 it may be advantageously cut every ten years. It makes a 

 valuable coal for smiths. 



All the birch trees, especially the black and the white, are so 



