BIRCH FAMILY 
Petioles stout, yellow, covered with black glands, enlarged at base, 
slightly grooved. Stipules ovate, acute, light green, caducous. 
Flowers.—April, moneecious, before the leaves. Staminate cat- 
kins clustered or in pairs, when mature become three to four inches 
long. Pistillate catkins one inch to one and a half inches long, 
peduncles bibracteolate, three-fourths to one inchin length. Scales 
lanceolate, pale green; styles bright red. 
Fruit.-—Strobiles, cylindrical, elongated, pendulous, long-stalked. 
Seales glabrous, wedge-shaped at base, rather longer than broad, 
with short, wide-spreading, rounded lobes. Nut oval, small, nar: 
rower than its wings. 
Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree ! 
Of your yellow bark, O Birch-tree ! 
Growing by the rushing river 
Tall and stately in the valley! 
Ta light canoe will build me, 
Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing, 
That shall float upon the river, 
Like a yellow lear in Autumn, 
Like a yellow water-lily ! 
—Henry W. LONGFELLOwW. 
The great triumph of the birch is the bark canoe. The design of a savage, 
it yet looks like the thought of a poct and its grace and fitness haunt the imagina- 
tion. I suppose its production was the inevitable result of the Indians’ wants 
and surroundings, but that does not detract from its beauty. It is, indeed, one 
of the fairest flowers the thorny plant of necessity ever bore. 
—JOHN BuRROUGHS, 
The Paper Birch possesses the most wonderful bark of any 
of our native trees. In outward color it is a lustrous creamy 
white, so brilliant that its gleam can be seen in the 
forest as far as the eye can reach. Beneath the smooth 
white skin are the paper-like layers which readily separate 
nto thin sheets and vary in color from cream to light tan. 
This bark is the joy and pride of every woodsman whether 
he be tourist, guide, or hunter. It makes his canoe, it roofs 
his cabin, it becomes for the time his dinner-service, it is a 
cup, a pail, a cloak, an umbrella. The thin papery layers 
into which the bark separates are of so firm a texture that it 
is possible both to write and paint upon them. Curious 
traditions gather about this natural paper. Pliny and Plu- 
tarch agree that the famous books of Numa Pompilius, written 
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