THE YOUNG 



Although the 



"Afflictive birch, 

 Curse of unlettered idle youth," 



has, since the era of school boards, 

 beea ousted from its quasi position as 

 the tree of knowledge, and supplanted 

 by the tawse, where corporal punish- 

 ment is not absolutely prohibited : yet 

 our legislators have established it as 

 the rod and symbol of authority for 

 juvenile delinquents in our courts of 

 justice. In Northern Eussia the 

 natives use a bundle of birch twigs, 

 with the leaves adhering, to flagellate 

 their bare bodies in their vapour baths, 

 till their flesh is " ruddier than the 

 cherry," when they rush out and roll 

 their steaming carcases in the snow to 

 cool themselves.^ Scavengers and 

 stablemen know that the slender tough 

 twigs of the birch form inimitable 

 brooms. 



The branches of the birch are very 

 subject to an abnormal development, 

 when owing to some injury the branch 

 ceases to elongate, but swelling into a 

 knot produces a multiplicity of small 

 twigs, which spreading in all directions 

 form an interlacing net- work, known 

 in Scotland as "craw's nests,'' and 

 many an over eager schoolboy has 

 " spelled " a tree, expecting to rob the 

 feathered builders, and found the nest 

 was only a "mare's." A somewhat simi- 

 lar malformation is seen in those knarled 



, * For a graphic and humourous account of this 

 primitive mode of bathing, ■written from recent peisonal 

 experience, see Du Chaillu's "Land of the Midnight 

 Son," Vol. n., p. 205. 



NATURALIST. 99 



excresences, which are so common on 

 the stems of aged and decrepid trees, 

 especially of oak and elm, and which 

 usually produce an exuberance of small 

 leafy twigs. On old decaying birch 

 trees may often be found a parasitic 

 fungus {Volypoms hetulinus). At first 

 this appears like a pulpy exudation, 

 with a slightly acid taste and smell, of 

 a pure white colour, and pear-shaped. 

 As it grows it assumes the size and 

 form of a pony's hoof ; if gathered at 

 this stage it will permanently retain 

 its shape, making a curiously interest- 

 ing addition to the herbarium. When 

 fully mature it expands into a flattened, 

 somewhat lobed and fan- shaped disk, 

 a foot in diameter, and three or four 

 inches in thickness, the under surface 

 pierced with innumerable pores three 

 or four lines in depth, whence the 

 name of the genus [polypoms]. The 

 flesh has now become firm and elastic, 

 of a coriaceous or corky character, its 

 white colour makes it very suitable for 

 carving minature models, and the 

 rustics use it as strops to sharpen their 

 razors on. Another fungus, a frequent 

 denizen of birch woods, although not 

 parasitical on the tree, as it is of terres- 

 trial growth, is the fly agaric [Agaricm 

 muscarius), the most gorgeous and the 

 most virulent of all our native toad- 

 stools. It may be easily recognised by 

 its brilliant scarlet cap, profusely dot- 

 ted with white scurfy warts. It is used 

 in country districts to make a fly 



