TIIE BIRCHES 89 



burn merrily to start a campfire, and the timber of the 

 trunk burns readily green or dry. 



The White Birch 



B, populifolia. Marsh. 



The wliite birch is a small, short-lived tree that grows in 

 swampy ground, its bark chalky white or grayish, with 

 triangular rough patches of black, where branches are or 

 have been. (The canoe birch has a clean bole, challvy 

 white, with none of these ugly black patches.) 



A vagabond tree it is, with thin pointed leaves and long 

 pencil-like catkins and seed cones. The chief contributions 

 of the poplar-leaved birch to the well-being of men are that 

 it clothes with beauty the most uniniviting situations, and 

 that it comes again, after fire or other general slaughter, 

 promptly and abundantly, from stump and scattered seed. 



The Yellow Birch 



B. lutca, INIichx. 



The yellow birch shows gleams of yellow under every rent 

 in its gray, silky, frayed-out surface. Here is a timber tree 

 of considerable size and value: its hard wood furnishes the 

 frames of northern sledges; the knots and burs make good 

 mallets; the curiously knotted roots show a curly grain, 

 valuable to the cabinet-maker. From New England to 

 Minnesota, and south along the Appalachian range, this 

 tree is found, always telling its name by the color of its 

 shaggy bark. 



