54 TREE-PLANTING. 



most plants, but which is favourable to the growth of 

 the birch, and although, at times, found in swampy 

 ground, few trees are so capable of resisting drought 

 so successfully. 



The B. a. pendula has its bark covered over with 

 rough exudations, which causes it to be readily dis- 

 tinguished when a plant from the Betula alba, which is 

 soft to the touch. They are frequently found inter- 

 mixed, while in other districts each is found growing 

 exclusively. Its positions are often so different and 

 varied, that while it may be found growing in exten- 

 sive coppice in the remote parts of the Highlands of 

 Scotland, on rocky elevations, it may also be more 

 frequently found adorning the margins of lakes and 

 rivers, and in sheltered woodland glades. On the 

 banks of the Findhorn, near Forres, in Morayshire, 

 there are trees sixty feet high, with trunks six feet in 

 circumference, the surface stratum of the soil being 

 sandy peat earth, with gravel upon a sandstone 

 bottom. As may be supposed from these different 

 conditions, the tree attains its maturity at different 

 ages, according to the nature of the soil, and the 

 situation it occupies ; but it seldom increases in size 

 after it is seventy years old. 



The common tree, where it grows wild, attains an 

 average height of about thirty feet, and the weeping 

 variety, which is much the handsomer of the two, an 

 altitude of about forty feet. The tree is indigenous 

 throughout the north, and in high situations in the 

 south of Europe. 



Plants may be purchased at a year old, and about 

 six inches high, at four shillings or five shillings per 

 thousand. Transplanted then into nursery lines,. 



