132 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



In spite of the delicate lightness of its appearance, 



for Coleridge calls it in happy appropriateness — 



Most beautiful 

 Of forest trees, the Lady of the Woods, 



it is pre-eminently a tree of the rugged uplands and 

 bleak mountain slopes, being found in Scotland up to an 

 altitude of three thousand five hundred feet above the 

 sea, a much higher level than that attained by any other 

 tree, companioning us as we ascend the loftier heights long 

 after we have left the Scotch pine behind us. In the 

 Apennines it reaches six thousand feet, while in the icy 

 North it approaches nearer the polar regions than any other 

 tree, and is the only tree found in Greenland at all. 



In Anglo-Saxon plant lists it is the hire, bine, beorc^ 

 or byrc^ while in Holland it is the berke^ in Denmark the 

 birk^ and in Germany the birke. It is suggested that these 

 names are all derived from the verb brechen, to brighten, 

 and that the allusion is to the brilliant silvery whiteness of 

 the bark. " It showeth wondrous white," saith Holland.^ 

 Wordsworth, in his description of an evening walk at 

 Winandermere writes — 



How pleasant, as the yellowing sun declines. 

 And with long rays and shades the landscape shines, 

 To mark the birch's stems all golden light, 

 That ht the dark slant woods with silvery white. 



And the same feature, the whiteness of the trunk, strikes 



the eye of Keats, who writes of — 



The silvery stems 

 Of delicate birch-trees. 



' An English translation of Pliny's Nahcral Histojy, a book written in the 

 first century of our era, was made by Philemon Holland in the reign of 

 Queen Elizabeth. Our quotation is Holland's apt rendering of Pliny's strong 

 expression, tnirabilis candor. 



