314 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [16:7— Oct., 1920 



is that it is very short-lived and as Clarence M. Weed says, is 

 ** Like a Lady in a far country". 



I found some very vivid descriptions of this tree : The slender, 

 drooping branches are so long and pliant that the slightest breeze 

 sets swaying in one direction from the trunk, like a shower of rain 

 driven by the wind. The birch does nor lose its pendulous grace 

 in mere limp dejection, like most of the weeping varieties of trees 

 that gardeners love to propagate, but it holds its head high and 

 the slender branches droop down, — a striking contrast to the 

 weeping willow and other lachrymose specimens of horticultural 

 art. 



There have been constant allusions to this tree in English litera- 

 ture. Perhaps the most descriptive is one of Sir Walter Scott's 

 which refers to the slender, pendulous boughs, 



"Where weeps the birch with silver bark 

 And long dishevelled hair." 



From an artist's point of view much has been said about these 

 trees. In the "Sylvan Year," Philip Gilbert Hamerton calls the 

 stem of the birch "one of the masterpieces of Nature," "Every- 

 thing," he says "has been done to heighten its unrivalled bril- 

 liance. The horizontal peeling of the bark, making dark rings at 

 irregular distances, the brown spots, the dark color of the small 

 twigs, the rough texture near the ground, and the exquisite silky 

 smoothness of the tight white bands above, offer exactly that 

 variety of contrast which makes us feel a rare quality like that 

 smooth whiteness as strong lays we are capable of feeling it. And 

 amongst the common effects to be seen in all northern countries, 

 one of the most brilliant is the opposition of birch trunks in sun- 

 shine against the deep blue or purple of a mountain distance in 

 shadow." 



Miss Jeckyll, in "Wood and Garden", says that the tints of the 

 stem give a precious lesson in color. "The white of the bark", 

 she says, "is here silvery white and there milk white, and some- 

 times shows the faintest tinge of rosy flush. Where the bark 

 has not yet peeled off, the stem is clouded and banded with delicate 

 gray and with the silver green of lichen. For about two feet 

 upward from the ground, in the case of young trees of about seven 

 to nine inches in diameter, the bark is dark in color, and lies in 

 thick and extremely rugged and upright ridges, contrasting 



