STUDIES OF TREES IN WINTER 



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 strongly with the smooth white skin 

 above. Where the two join, the smooth bark 

 is parted in upright slashes, through which the 

 dark rough bark seems to swell up, reminding 

 one forcibly of some of the old fifteenth-century 

 German costumes, where a dark velvet is ar- 

 ranged to rise in crumpled folds through slash- 

 ings in white satin. " 



The wood is used in Europe for fuel and for 

 making furniture. It is rather curious to find 

 that the birch has been celebrated as an instru- 

 ment of chastisement since early Roman times. 

 Gerard says that in his time "schoolmasters and 

 parents do terrify their children with rods made 

 of birch"; and Shenstone, in the "Schoolmis- 

 tress," has a pathetic little account of the fears 

 of small boys as they watched the wind waving 

 the branches of a birch tree growing by the 

 schoolhouse, 



" For not a- wind might curl the leaves that blew, 

 But their limbs shuddered, and their pulse beat low ; 

 And, as they looked, they found their terror grew, 

 And shaped it into rods and tingled at the view." 



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