The Birches 



northern Pennsylvania, central Michigan and Minnesota, northern 

 Nebraska, Black Hills, northern Montana and northwestern 

 Washington. Uses: Picturesque, graceful ornamental tree; 

 hardy, rapid grower, vigorous, easily transplanted; wood used for 

 spools, shoe lasts, wood pulp and fuel. Starchy cambium furnishes 

 food to Indians and trappers. Bark used for canoes, letter paper 

 and a great variety of articles, useful and decorative. 



The Indians easily proved their ingenuity in the uses of the 

 paper birch. They framed their tents of it, and built canoes, 

 ribbing them with cedar, and covering them with large sheets 

 of birch bark. They sewed the seams with threads made of 

 spruce or cedar roots, and closed the chinks with pitch or gum of 

 the Balm of Gilead. These small craft were graceful and durable, 

 and the Indian managed them with consummate skill. An 

 early letter writer from the colonies described these "delicate 

 canowes so light that two men will transport one of them overland 

 whither they list, and one of them will transporte tenne or twelve 

 Salvages by water at a time." Hunters and trappers, following 

 clumsily the Indian's example, are able to supply their camps 

 with all necessary utensils, such as baskets, buckets, dippers, 

 dishes all made of this material. The weather is never so wet 

 but that fragments of birch burn merrily to start a campfire. 



The range of the canoe birch is remarkable. It reaches a 

 higher latitude than any other deciduous tree, and covers a wider 

 territory. It is a noticeable feature of the almost continuous 

 forest that once stretched from Newfoundland to Washington 

 state, south to Nebraska and Pennsylvania and north to within 

 the Arctic circle. 



The bark, which gives name and character to this tree, is 

 distinguishable from the white bark of other species by its pearly 

 surface and chalky whiteness which rubs off on clothing. It 

 strips readily into thin horizontal sheets, marked with elongated 

 lenticels, or breathing holes. The feminine tourist in Northern 

 woods loses no time in supplying herself with birch-bark note 

 paper. The bark is usually removed in thick plates, from which 

 the thin sheets may be stripped at leisure. These sheets are 

 orange coloured, with a faint purplish bloom upon them, and 

 darker, purplish lines. Alas! for the zeal of these tourists. They 

 usually cut too deep, and the strip that tears off so evenly, girdles 

 and kills the tree, because nothing is left to protect the living 



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