176 TREES GROWING IN RICH SOIL. 



thin papery sheets, which are faint red in colour and marked with short, dark 

 lines. Leaves: simple; alternate; with downy petioles; ovate; with pointed 

 apex and rounded, wedge-shaped, or sub-cordate base; doubly and unequally 

 serrate; dark green and smooth above; dull below and pubescent in the angles 

 of the straight ribs. Flowen: monoecious; growing in slender, cylindrical and 

 scaly catkins. Strobiles : growing on slender stalks ; the wings of the minute 

 nuts broad and often fringed. 



Happily the canoe birch wears a uniform that we all know ; 

 and when many of the trees are seen from afar, amid the 

 dark shades of the forest, they appear not unlike the advancing 

 guard of a regiment. There is about them the same air of 

 distinction from all that surrounds them. The tree seems 

 to belong especially to the primitive people of the north, 

 who must surely regard it with affection. The Indian's birch- 

 bark canoe carries him swiftly and silently over the water as he 

 perchance guides it by a paddle made from the wood of the 

 tree. When the streams are frozen and the covering of the 

 earth is as white as the birch's bark, he is drawn on sledges or 

 glides along on snow shoes that are alike constructed in part 

 from the tree. From rough weather his wigwam is also pro- 

 tected by its resinous bark, and when the sweet sap begins to 

 flow in the springtime he knows how to boil it into a syrup or 

 make it into a cooling drink. Of his life the tree is a part, and 

 from the standpoint of sentiment it seems as though it should 

 be left to the Indian rather than given over to lumbermen who 

 sell it for the making of shoe lasts, pegs and fuel. Tourists 

 inflict great damage to the appearance of the tree by tearing 

 off its bark, as its peculiarity of peeling horizontally is well 

 known. In the mountainous regions of the north it is frequent 

 on wooded slopes or often by the borders of streams. 



That Hiawatha's request comes so spontaneously to the mind 

 in connection with the tree seems to accentuate the Indians' 

 vital love and knowledge of it. 



" Give me of your bark, O Birch-Tree I 

 Of your yellow bark, O Birch-Tree, 

 Growing by the rushing river, 

 Tall and stately in the valley ! 



