DENDROLOGY. 123 



the bark of no other tree, is the construction of canoes. To 

 procure proper pieces, the largest and smoothest trunks are 

 selected : in the spring two circular incisions are made several 

 feet apart, and two longitudinal ones on opposite sides of the 

 tree ; after which, by introducing a wooden wedge, the bark is 

 easily detached. These plates are usually ten or twelve feet 

 long, and two feet nine inches broad. To form the canoe they 

 are stitched together with fibrous roots of the white spruce, about 

 the size of a quill, which are deprived of the bark, split, and 

 suppled in water. The seams are coated with resin of the 

 balm of Gilead. Great use is made of these canoes by the 

 Indians and by the French Canadians in their long journies into 

 the interior of the country ; they are very light, and are easily 

 transported on the shoulders from one lake or river to another, 

 which is called the portage. A canoe calculated for four persons 

 with their baggage weighs from forty to fifty pounds ; some of 

 them are made to carry fifteen passengers. Such are the 

 ordinary uses of the bark and of the wood of this tree. 



White Birch. Betula populifolia. 



This species, like the canoe birch, grows in Canada and in 

 the northern extremity of the United States. It is found also in 

 the lower parts of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 

 In Virginia it is more rare. In the environs of New York and of 

 Philadelphia it is called JVhite Birch, and this name is habitually 

 used in the state of Maine, where that of Old Field Birch is 

 also frequently employed to distinguish the white birch from the 

 canoe birch. The white birch is most frequently found in places 

 scantily furnished with woods, where the soil is dry and meagre, 

 and generally exhausted by culture. 



The ordinary height of the white birch is 20 or 25 feet. 

 Single trees, which grow accidentally in moist places, expand to 

 an ampler size, and are sometimes 30 or 35 feet high, and eight 

 or nine inches in diameter, on which the branches are 

 numerous, slender, and generally drooping. The leaves are 



