306 THE BIRCH. 
attains a height of about thirty feet, and the weeping variety 
about forty feet ; but both sorts rise to a much greater height 
when formed into plantations, particularly when interspersed 
with other trees. Some of the finest weeping birches in 
Britain stand on the banks of the river Findhorn, near Forres, 
in Morayshire ; these are sixty feet high, with trunks upwards 
of two feet in diameter, and display pendant masses of spray 
ten feet in length, adding a graceful variety of verdure to 
scenes in themselves of great beauty. The soil is a surface 
stratum of sandy peat earth, with gravel, incumbent on sand- 
stone. In nurseries the weeping variety is the kind chiefly 
cultivated, and notwithstanding the disposition of the plant 
to grow wild, it is generally the most uncertain nursery crop 
of any hardy tree. 
The seeds are usually ripe in September, when they are 
collected, and to prevent fermentation, should be thinly 
exposed in an airy situation, until they become quite dry, 
when they may be packed up until March ; they should then 
be sown. Respecting the nursery treatment of this tree, it 
is of importance to notice that a crop of seedlings will seldom 
or never succeed on ground which has been much used in 
raising nursery crops. All the best crops of the tree I have 
ever seen have been produced on new ground. Failure is so 
certain to follow the sowing of the seed on ordinary nursery 
ground that of late I do not practise it unless I can obtain an 
inch or two of fresh surface soil, clean and rich from some 
adjoining field, such as that after a crop of potatoes or turnips, 
or any other well-manured green crop. A friable sandy peat 
soil is generally preferred for their growth, which should be 
smoothly dug over, and beds formed four feet broad, with an 
alley of one foot between each. The seeds are then spread 
regularly on the surface, at the rate of one bushel of clean 
seed to each bed of thirty lineal yards. In dry weather they 
are closely pressed into the ground with the feet, and no other 
covering is necessary ; if protracted drought ensue in May or 
June, it is of advantage to shade the beds, which is usually 
done with spruce or fir branches. Plants a year old, if well 
