260 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



startling prominence, so that it focusses the entire 

 attention, like a single splendid streak of chalk-white 

 lightning. Again, in mid-winter, when the birch by 

 rights should be protectively coloured and incon- 

 spicuous, it is the other trees we do not notice, and the 

 birch which rises by the edge of the frozen stream, 

 perhaps, or against the dark wall of the pines, and dis- 

 plays all its snowy limbs to best advantage against 

 evergreen or sky. 



Only the sycamore has a bark which can rival the 

 birch for showy effect yet how different are the two 

 trees. It has never occurred to any one to call the 

 sycamore a feminine tree. It is large, dignified, mas- 

 culine, and totally unaware of the picturesque effect 

 created by its tortuous branches and its great mottled 

 patches of grayish white bark, alternating with brown. 

 When all is said, the birch is a vain tree, but we must 

 also admit it has a right to be; and we cannot scold it, 

 either, it wears its white betimes with such an air of 

 virgin innocence. 



Many years ago a lover of trees in the village where 

 my boyhood was passed prepared a little booklet, 

 describing and picturing a score or so of the finest 

 trees in the township. Only the other day I came 

 across a copy, after the lapse of more than two decades. 

 I sat down to its pages as to a feast. Yes, there was 

 the old Cap'n George Bachelder sassafras, the largest 

 in the State, sixty-two feet high! How familiar it 



