228 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK I. screws, panniers, brooms, wands, bavin-bands, and withs for fagots ; 



•^^"^"'^ it claims a memory for arrows, bolts, shafts, our old English artillery ; 



also for dishes, bowls, ladles, and other domestic utensils, in the good old 

 days of more simplicity, yet of better and truer hospitality. With this 

 tree, whereof they have a blacker kind, the Northern Americans make 

 canoes, boxes, buckets, kettles, dishes, (which they sew and join very 

 curiously with thread made of Cedar-roots,) and divers other domestical 



done, the plants may be taken out of the nui'sery, when they are out of the r^ach of weeds, 

 and then planted ; and no farther care need be taken of them than keeping out cattle, till 

 they are fit for cutting. The best season for planting out the Birch, if it be on dry ground, 

 is autumn ; but if it be in a wet soil, the spring is preferable. 



So much for the cultivation of the common Birch ; let us now give directions for the pro- 

 pagation of the foreign kinds. These may be raised from seeds and layers. We receive the 

 seeds from America, where they are natives ; when sown in beds of fine mould, and covered 

 about a quarter of an inch deep, they will generally grow. 



During the time the plants are in the seminary, they must be constantly weeded and 

 watered in dry weather ; and when they are one or two years old, according to their strength, 

 they should be planted in the nursery, in rows in the usual manner. Weeding must always 

 be observed in summer, and digging between the rows in winter ; and when they are about a 

 yard or four feet high, they will be of a good size to be planted out for the wilderness 

 quarters. 



The propagation by layers, is the way to continue the varieties of the different sorts. 

 A sufficient number of plants should be procured for this purpose, and set on a spot 

 of double-dug ground, three yards distant from each other. The year following, if they 

 have made no young shoots, they should be headed to within half a foot of the ground, 

 to form the stools, which will then shoot vigorously the summer following ; and in the 

 autumn the young shoots should be splashed near the stools, and the tender twigs layered 

 near their ends. They will then strike root, and become good plants by the autumn 

 following ; whilst fresh twigs will have sprung up from the stools, to be ready for the same 

 operation. The layers, then, should be takeh up, and the operation pei-formed afresh. — 

 If the plants designed for stools have made good shoots the first year, they need not 

 be headed down, but splashed near the ground, and all the young twigs layered. Thus 

 may an immediate crop be raised this way ; whilst young shoots will spring out in great 

 plenty below the splashed part, in order for layering the succeeding year, This work, 

 therefore, may be ' repeated every autumn or winter ; when some of the strongest layers 

 may be planted out, if they are immediately wanted ; whilst the others may be removed 

 into the nursery, to grow to be stronger plants, before they are removed to their 

 destined habitations. 



Cuttings also, if set in a moist, shady border the beginning of October, will frequently 

 grow : But as this is not a sure method, and as these trees are so easily propagated by 

 layers, it hardly deserves to be put in practice. 



