THE BIRCH 3 



observer will have noticed that this polished silver 

 rind is interrupted at frequent intervals by transverse 

 ridges of a darker colour extending partly round 

 the stem. These are the " lenticels," or breathing- 

 pores of" the bark, replacing the " stomata " of the 

 young epidermis, and corresponding to the holes- 

 filled with powdery dried ceUs that extend through 

 the cork of the Oak at right angles to its surface. 

 As the stem or branch increases in diameter, these 

 lenticels become stretched from mere spots into 

 long lines. 



It is when its slightly crooked stem stands alone 

 on the slope of some river glen, brown with fallen 

 leaves of autumn, and lit up by the varying hue 

 of the dead fronds of bracken, with its round 

 slender branches, of polished purple bronze, weeping 

 in festoons eight or ten feet long, as we see it in 

 MacWhirter's pictures, that the Birch is seen in all 

 its beauty of outline. It is, however, when these 

 bare boughs, or those of the smaller trees that dot 

 the heathery wastes of Epping Forest or Bagshot 

 Heath, begin to clothe themselves in April with 

 their transparent foliage of fluttering brilliant leaflets, 

 that the tree is, perhaps, at its perfection of grace 

 and loveliness. When grouped together in numbers, 

 a grove of young Birches in winter presents an 

 almost smoke-like hazy effect of copper boughs and 

 purple twigs springing round the slender silver 

 stems ; but in spring they lose all signs of sombre 

 melancholy, and seem to laugh as their leaves dance 

 in the sunbeams which faU between them on to the 

 Dog-violets that strew the woodside. 



