THE FLOWERS OF EARLY JUNE. I. 155 
modification through new conditions, that its beauty 
might be preserved to a good old age. 
Of the twenty-five species of birch known to science 
five are found in this county, the gray, the paper, the 
black, the yellow and the red. They form one of the 
most interesting groups of the genus. ‘No trees are 
more distinguished for their light and feathery foliage, 
and the graceful sweep of their limbs. From the deli- 
cate and slender gray birch, throwing its thin leaves and 
often pensile spray lightly on the air, to the broad- 
headed black birch, with its rich, glossy and abundant 
foliage, weighing its pendulous branches almost to the 
ground,— no family affords such a variety of aspect.” 
I like to see them in early spring when covered with 
their long aments, which hang like tassels of purple and 
gold among the just opening leaves. Then they yield 
to none of our forest trees in beauty. They are valu- 
able, too, for their timber; and one of them, the paper 
birch, was of the greatest importance to the Indians of 
those regions where it grows naturally, in the making of 
canoes and tents, both models of ingenuity and taste. 
Longfellow, in ‘‘ Hiawatha,” represents the building of 
a canoe, and gives us Hiawatha’s appeals to the birch, 
the cedar, the larch and the fir to contribute of their 
best. And then we have this pleasing picture of the 
finished work: 
