FOREST TREES. 281 



lie brings into market. Formerly the squaws cooked their 

 food in bark cauldrons, in which water was brought to the 

 boiling point by putting in a series of red-hot stones. 

 The back settler uses birch bark for roofing purposes, and 

 it is highly prized in house-building ; a layer of bark 

 under the clap-boards makes a very warm and comfort- 

 able house. The Indian wigwams, made entirely of birch 

 bark, are perfectly tight in all weathers, and very warm. 

 But perhaps it is in kindling fires and making torches 

 that birch bark is most valuable. Without bark it is 

 very hard to kindle a fire in the woods in wet weather ; 

 bat the bark *is always dry and always inflammable. 

 Often and often the backwoodsman would have to spend 

 the night in the woods were it not for the birch-bark torch 

 which serves to light him home to his camp. Out of it he 

 makes his plates and his drinking cups, even his spoons. 



Acerinese. 



Two of these trees are very common all over Canada, 

 the rock maple (Acer saccharinum), and the white 

 maple (A. dasycarpum). These are the most beautiful 

 trees in the Canadian forest. Their tall rugged trunks 

 are crowned with a mass of foliage, beautiful in summer, 

 but doubly beautiful when turned by the early frosts 

 of the fall into twenty gorgeous colours and shades 

 of colours. My pen is quite unable to describe the 

 beauties of the Canadian forest at this season of the 

 year. No painter has ever done justice to it. The rock 

 maple is a very tough, close-grained, and hard wood. It 

 is highly prized for axe handles, sleigh runners, shafts, 

 poles, machinery, and any purpose for which strength and 

 elasticity are required. The bird's-eye maple that we see 



