24 FOREST LIFE AND 



cumference three and four feet from the ground. Its wood is very 

 useful for cabinet purposes, and is excellent for fuel. 



The White or Canoe Birch is most remarkable for the beauti- 

 ful thin sheets of bark which it affords, from which the Indian 

 canoe is constructed. It also makes excellent covering for a tent. 

 In some parts of the northern regions it is said to attain a diam- 

 eter of six or seven feet. 



The White Birch possesses "in an eminent degree the light- 

 ness and airiness of the Birch family, spreading out its glistening 

 leaves on the ends of a very slender and often pencil spray, with 

 an indescribable softness. So that Coleridge might have called 

 it as he did the corresponding European species, 



" Most beautiful 

 Of forest trees — the lady of the woods." 



THE MAPLE-TREE. 



This family is very numerous. "Nearly forty species are 

 known, of which ten belong to the United States." ' The climate 

 of New England is peculiarly favorable to their growth, as is 

 shown by the perfection to which several of the most valuable 

 species attain.' The Red Maple is most remarkable for the vary- 

 ing color of its leaves, which greatly beautify forest scenery. The 

 leaves begin to turn in the latter part of summer and during the 

 earlier part of autumn, from green to a deep crimson or scarlet. 

 The forests of no other country present so beautiful a variety of 

 coloring as our own ; ' even corresponding climates with the same 

 families bear no comparison.' The difference is said to depend 

 " on the greater transparency of our atmosphere, and consequently 

 greater intensity of the light ; for the same cause which renders 

 a much larger number of stars visible by night, and which clothes 

 our flowering plants with more numerous flowers, and those of 

 deeper, richer tints, gives somewhat of tropical splendor to our 

 really colder parallels of latitude." 



