128 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



gland-tipt, etc. Bordering such dry and arid regions, it is 

 not found far away from the banks of mountain streams, but 

 usually follows along their courses valley wards. The tim- 

 ber is tough, and, kept dry, durable — bezo, birch, and still it 

 is used for making besoms or spray-brooms for rough sweep- 

 ing, for crates and wicker-work, hoops like the hazel, good 

 for gunpowder charcoal like alder, and for crayons like the 

 willow. We noticed it used for wagon-tongues or poles, for 

 fencing and fence bars, and for sundry other farm, rural, or 

 domestic purposes. 



The Far Western White Birch well represents the Eastern 

 in the close smooth bark, which greatly serves to protect and 

 preserve the wood, and is therefore often left on; this prop- 

 ert} 7 , common, more or less, to all the birches, is most extra- 

 ordinarily exemplified in the almost imperishable quality of 

 all the sheety or laminated papery-bark birches exposed as 

 roofs, etc., to sun and rain, or even buried in bogs, when it 

 lasts for many thousands of years; in America, at least, 

 never sufficiently appreciated nor duly utilized. In Russia, 

 and elsewhere to less extent, the crude essential oil combined 

 with empyreums from rude earth pits, in the manner of coal- 

 pits, has been long in use for dressing leather by smearing 

 and treating skins designed for the saddle, the book-binder,, 

 etc. ; in short, these essential oils, oil of cedar, and the like, 

 not only prevent mildew and other fungi, but are known to 

 furnish a large and constant supply of ozone — nature's uni- 

 versal disinfectant and conservator of health — but they also 

 render, all fabrics, fumigated, painted, varnished, or in any 

 wise saturated, nearly as durable as the original source 

 whence derived ; hence their time-honored repute, and they 

 are still used in Russia and elsewhere, as before observed,, 

 for preserving leather, skins, feathers, etc., from decay, mil- 

 dew, etc. 



All birches, together with our own, have long, lithy, deli- 

 cate twigs, and for aught we know to the contrary, might 

 still be used, as of yore, for juvenile disciplinary purposes. 

 " Bhoorja," the ancient Sanscrit name for an Asiatic species, 

 is by some considered the probable primitive origin of our 

 word " birch." (?) " Book" is from beechen bark, and birch- 

 bark. As usual, with many other trees, when wounded or 

 badly attacked by insects, the normally arrested growth flies 

 off into a set of petty erratic spangles of irresolute twigs 

 known and designated by the Scotch as " witches' knots." 



Birches, in general, may be said to express feminine ele- 

 gance in form, and with the wind merrily at play among the 

 branches, vivacity in action, if so be the foliage sufficiently 

 abounds to redeem them from trenching too closely upon the 

 trivial; but as we usually behold them, when the brightly 

 varnished leaves glitter and sparkle the air with living dia- 



