hess] THE BIRCHES 311 



flaking off and rolling back in thin strips. The twigs are reddish 

 brown and pliant, and the leaf scars are alternate. 



Its wood is light and strong and is used for furniture, wooden 

 ware, ox yokes, shoe lasts and shoes. The red birch is found grow- 

 ing on the banks of the Nashua and Merrimac Rivers and beside 

 smaller streams in Massachusetts, but it grows more frequently 

 along river banks in the South than in the North. 



Now we will make a study of those birches whose pistillate 

 aments are stalked and pendulous; the Canoe, the American White 

 and the European White. 



The Canoe Birch, which is perhaps one of the best known 

 birches and about which a great many poems have been written, 

 is found from Labrador to the Alaskan Coast; south to Long 

 Island, northern Pennsylvania, Central Michigan and Minnesota 

 and through the northern west. (However it is at its best along 

 the bayous of the lower Mississippi, where its roots and base of 

 trunk are inundated for half the year) . The canoe birch reaches a 

 higher latitude than any other deciduous tree, and covers a wider 

 territory. 



The bark which gives name and character to the tree, is dis- 

 tinguishable from the white bark of other species by its pearly 

 surface and chalky whiteness, which rubs off on clothing. It strips 

 readily into thin horizontal sheets, marked with elongated lenticels 

 or breathing holes. The pearly lustre of its clean white bark 

 and the density of its lustrous foliage make it one of the most 

 beautiful, as it is one of the largest, of our native birches. 



The fruit ripens in June and the wind, shaking the erect cones, 

 scatters the seeds on the rich land from which the water has 

 subsided. Here they germinate at once, and are rooted, vigorous 

 little seedlings by the time the floods return, able to keep their 

 heads above water and to thrive like their parents, adding color 

 and grace of line and motion to the landscapes of many different 

 regions. 



Alice Lounsberry gives a beautiful description of this tree and 

 its uses ; ' ' Happily the canoe birch wears a uniform that we all 

 know and when many of the trees are seen from afar, amid the dark 

 shades of the forest, they appear not unlike the advancing guard 

 of a regiment. The tree seems to belong especially to the primi- 

 tive people of the north, who must surely regard it with affection. 

 The Indian's canoe carries him swiftly and silently, guided by a 



