Vv. 4. THE WHITE BIRCH. 213 
and a most effectual screen against heat and cold; and it is 
almost imperishable. 
Sp. 5. Tue Wuire Bircs. B. populifolia. Aiton. 
Leaves and strobile figured by Michaux, Sylva, II, Plate 71; the tree, leaves 
and aments, by Loudon, Arboretum, VII, Plate 235. 
The white birch, or the little gray birch, as it is often more 
descriptively called, can be mistaken for no other tree except 
the canoe birch, from which it is distinguished by the grayish 
color and chalky surface of its harder bark, and by the marked 
triangular form of its leaf, which tapers to a very long, slender 
point. It isa tree of third rate, never, so far as I have seen, 
even in the most favorable situations, attaining the height of 
forty feet, and usually not over twenty-five or thirty. One of 
the largest I have ever seen measured four feet and two inches 
in girth at the ground, and two feet eight inches at three feet 
above. It is, in many partsof New England, beyond whose 
limits it isnot known to extend far, southward or northward, 
the most common companion of the pitch pine, in the poorest 
sandy soils. But, independently of its associations with ster- 
ility, which it is well entitled to, as it springs up and grows 
rapidly in spots deserted by every other deciduous tree,—it is 
a graceful and beautiful object, enjoying, in an eminent de- 
gree, the lightness and airiness of the birch family, and spread- 
ing out its glistening leaves on the ends of a very slender and 
often pensile spray, with an indescribable softness. So that 
Coleridge might have called it, as he did the corresponding Eu- 
ropean species, 
“most beautiful 
Of forest trees—-the lady of the woods.” 
It often makes a striking appearance at a little distance, from its 
delicate and elegantly cut, feathery foliage, and the strong con- 
trast between the white trunk and the black branches, and the 
bright speckles of the sun’s light thrown back from the glossy 
leaves. 
The stem is erect, or more usually ascending, clothed with a 
chalky white or grayish white bark, witha triangular dusky 
