82 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



trees, in the entrance of this treatise. But if the 

 sovereign effects of the juice of this despicable 

 tree supply its other defects (which makes 

 some judge it unworthy to be brought into the 

 catalogue of woods to be propagated), I may 

 for once be permitted to play the empiric, and 

 to gratify our laborious woodman with a 

 draught of his own liquor: And the rather, 

 because these kind of secrets are not yet suf- 

 ficiently cultivated ; and ingenious planters 

 would by all means be encouraged to make 

 more trials of this nature, as the Indians, and 

 other nations, have done on their palms, and 

 trees of several kinds, to their great emolu- 

 ment." 



Evelyn notes that the birch can accom- 

 modate itself to almost any kind of soil, '' which 

 cannot be too barren," he says, "for it will 

 thrive in the dry, and the wet, sand and stony, 

 marshes and bogs ; the water-galls and fuliginous 

 roots of forests that hardly bear any grass, do 

 many times spontaneously produce it in abund- 

 ance whether the place be high, or low, and 

 nothing comes amiss to it ". 



I am most familiar with it as a fringe round 

 plantations of Scots pine ; and either in summer 



