84 ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



crops of twenty to fifty years' growth, where an average price 

 of 6d. per foot can be obtained, pay well compared with 

 species which require replanting in the ordinary way and are 

 of slower growth. 



The Birch {Betuta alba). 



This tree, although famed for the beauty of its silver 

 trunk and graceful weeping branches, is looked upon with 

 contempt by most foresters as an unprofitable tree, and for 

 this reason is rarely planted in any quantities. It forms, 

 however, the natural growth on thousands of acres of waste 

 or semi-waste land in the British Isles, and especially such 

 as are covered with heath and bog plants, and it has the not 

 too common merit of growing almost equally as well on very 

 dry as on wet ground. In the remote districts of the High- 

 lands of Scotland, and in many parts of England as well, the 

 birch was of considerable importance in early days. Many 

 of the rough huts, hovels, sheds, etc., of the poorer classes 

 were made of this tree, or at anyrate their roofs, the long clean 

 poles being used for rafters, and the bark took the place of lath 

 and plaster. Wine was made from its sap, its branches served 

 as fuel, and the early Briton used its bark for his canoes, and 

 its branches and fibre for rough cordage. 



As a timber tree the birch is principally used for turning 

 and furniture work, such as chair- and bobbin-making. For 

 temporary fencing it is useful on estates, while in pit-wood 

 districts long clean poles meet with a ready sale at from 6d. 

 to 8d. per foot, or about los. per ton. It is not sufficiently 

 profitable, however, to justify its planting beyond the margins 

 of plantations, or on patches of land where nothing else will 

 thrive, as in peaty and swampy ground, or on dry poor 

 knolls where ordinary timber trees get hide-bound and stunted. 

 Planted thickly, it soon smothers the surface vegetation, and 

 forms a humus layer of moderate depth ; and, as it is rabbit- 

 proof after the first three or four years, it is well adapted for 

 planting on poor tracts of land which are practically given 

 over to rabbits and rough shooting. 



But probably the chief value of birch in economic 

 forestry lies in the freedom with which it sows itself on land 



