AMERICAN FOREST TREES 579 



find it suitable for most of their commodities. It is sometimes listed as 



v 



wooden shoe material, but no particular instance has been reported where 

 it has been so used in this country. In Maryland some of the manu- 

 facturers of peach baskets make bands or hoops of it, and pronounce it 

 as satisfactory for that purpose as elm. 



The supply is not in much danger of exhaustion. The species is 

 equipped to take care of itself, occupying as it does, ground not in de- 

 mand for farming purposes. When a tree once gets a start it has a 

 chance to escape the ax until large enough for use. 



WHITE ALASKA BIRCH (Betula alaskana) is usually called simply 

 white birch where it grows. It is not exclusively an Alaska species 

 though that is the only place where it touches the territory of the United 

 States. It is supposed by some to be closely related to the white birches 

 of northern Asia, but the relationship, if it exists, has not been establish- 

 ed. In Alaska it grows as far north as any timber extends. It was first 

 discovered and reported in 1858 on the Saskatchewan river, east of the 

 Rocky Mountains, and its range is now known to extend down the valley 

 of the Mackenzie river toward the Arctic ocean to a point more than 100 

 miles north of the Arctic circle. It is common in many parts of Alaska 

 both along the coast and in the interior. In some portions of that terri- 

 tory it is an important source of fuel. Trees are from twenty-five to 

 sixty feet high, and from six to eighteen inches in diameter. The bark 

 is thin and often nearly white, separating into thin scales. The tree 

 bears typical birch cones, but larger than those of some of the other 

 species. No tests of the wood's physical properties have been made, but 

 it looks like the wood of paper birch, and will probably attain to con- 

 siderable importance in the future, since it grows over a large area, and 

 in many parts is abundant. There remain many things for both 

 botanists and wood-users to investigate concerning this tree which has 

 a range of more than half a million square miles. 



WESTERN BIRCH (Betula occidentalis) is believed to be the largest 

 birch in the world, and yet it is not of much commercial importance in 

 the United States, because of scarcity, occurring only in northwestern 

 Washington and in the adjacent parts of British Columbia, as far as its 

 range has been determined. It resembles paper birch, and has often 

 been supposed to be that tree. The people in the restricted region 

 where it grows speak of it simply as birch. The largest trees are 100 feet 

 high and four feet in diameter, clear of limbs forty or fifty feet. A 

 height of seventy feet and a diameter of two are common. The general 

 color of the trunk is orange-brown, the new bark, exposed by exfoliation, 

 is yellow. The tree prefers the border of streams and the shores of 

 lakes. Though it is the largest of the birches, its seeds are among the 



