THE FAB WESTERN PACIFIC BIRCH. 127 



childhood scenes and charming 1>y-gone memories of the 

 mines, where we sat beneath her shade — yea, slept and 

 dreamed the happy golden dreams that grosser gold can 

 never buy; bless the good tree! though we never rest under 

 her shadow more — yet her soft refreshing voice still vibrates 

 on the heart-strings of that harp of a thousand, 



•• Like the whispering breeze, 

 That lulls on the leaves and dies anion" the trees." 



THE FAR WESTERN PACIFIC BIRCH. 



(Betula oeeidentalis.) 



"Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine, 

 Among thy leaves that palpitate forever: 

 •:■• * * Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, 

 So frankly coy, so full of trembling confidences; 

 Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets 

 Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses 

 And nature gives me all her Summer confidences. 

 * •:;:- * Thy ripple, like a river, 

 Flows valleyward. where calmness is, and by it 

 My heart is floated down into the land of quiet." 



— Lowell. 



rT^HE Pacific Birch is a modest unpretentious tree, deli- 

 cate, light and airy, spiry and sprightly form and 

 aspect, seldom more than fifteen to thirty feet high by 

 five to ten inches in diameter, extending along the eastern 

 slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California for many 

 hundreds of miles, around north and west to Siskiyou County, 

 and indeed to Washington Territory and Rocky Mountains, 

 and so southwesterly into New Mexico. In our sparsely 

 timbered regions bordering the sandy deserts, as e. g. Owen's 

 Valley region, and there it is found higher and highest, 

 chiefly between four thousand and ten thousand feet altitude. 

 Here it is in much request for a greater variety of domestic 

 and rural uses than some other more valuable timber trees 

 of difficult access. To our own standard of observation, its 

 growth and general appearance greatly resembles the Eastern 

 White Birch (Betula alba var. populifolia) of old pasture fields, 

 save that the bark at the base often becomes black ; is not so 

 purely white above, and the cherry-colored twigs copiously 

 sprinkled with small white resinous warts; slender leaf- 

 stems shorter, hence the tremulous aspen-like motion, though 

 less in degree, is somewhat compensated by a lighter hue 

 beneath ; form rather broadly egg-shaped, the fine teeth 



