DECIDUOUS ORNAMENTAL TREES. 135 



Stems, and delicate, airy, drooping foliage. Our White birch, 

 being a small tree, is very handsome in such situations, and 

 offers the most pleasing variety to the eye, when seen in con- 

 nexion with other foliage. Several kinds, as the Yellow and 

 the Black birches, are really stately trees, and form fine groups 

 by themselves. Indeed, a most beautiful and varied mass 

 might be formed by collecting together all the different kinds, 

 with their characteristic barks, branches, and foliage. 



As an additional recommendation, many of these trees 

 grow on the thinnest and most indifferent soils, whether 

 moist or dry ; and in cold, bleak, and exposed situations, as 

 well as in warm and sheltered places. 



We shall enumerate the different kinds, as follows : — 



The Canoe birch, Boleau a. Canot, of the French Cana- 

 dians, (5. papyracea,) sometimes also called the Paper birch, 

 is according to Michaux, most common in the forests of the 

 eastern states, north of latitude 43°, and in the Canadas. 

 There it attains its largest size, sometimes seventy feet in 

 height, and three in diameter. Its branches are slender, 

 flexible, covered with a shining brown bark, dotted with 

 white ; and on trees of moderate size, the bark of the trunk 

 is of a brilliant white : it is often used for roofing houses, 

 for the manufacture of baskets, boxes, etc., besides its most im- 

 portant use for canoes, as already mentioned. The leaves, 

 borne on petioles four or five lines long, are of a middling 

 size, oval, unequally denticulated, smooth, and of a dark 

 green colour. 



The White birch, [B. populifolia,) is a tree of much 

 smaller size, generally from twenty to thirty-five feet in 

 height : it is found in New-York and the other middle states, 

 as well as at the north. The trunk, like the foregoing, is cov- 

 ered with silvery bark; the branches are slender, and generally 

 drooping when the tree attains considerable size. The leaves 

 are smooth on both surfaces, heart-shaped at the base, very 

 acuminate, and doubly and irregularly toothed. The peti- 

 oles are slightly twisted, and the leaves are almost as tremu- 



