32 Bulletin of Wisconsin Natural History Society. Vol. 1. No. 1 
Here a number of old individuals stand in a northerly exposure 
on the slope towards the St. Paul railway tracks. There are no 
seedlings or young trees, but this is easily accounted for by the 
fact that the grove in which they stand has been deprived of the 
greater part of its underbrush, that the crown cover is much 
broken and grass has occupied the soil. 
It may be stated here that these particular trees have all the 
typical characteristics of the species, except that the bark is very 
rough and does not easily roll up in clean, lateral strips. This is 
undoubtedly due to the great age of the individuals. I may state 
here that however distinct the two species of B. liitea and B. lenta 
may be in the east, they shade oft into each other very much in 
Wisconsin. In the fall of 1897, in company with Prof. Filibert 
Roth or Cornell University, I found a grove of birches at ^liller's 
Lake, in Langlade County, where this fact was illustrated to per- 
fection. From trees with dark and rough bark, which should have 
been B. lenta, we gathered fruit catkins bearing scales with nar- 
row, almost parallel lobes; from trees on which the bark was sil- 
ver}% thin, and stripping oft easily, Ave got scales with lobes 
spreading almost at right angles ; and we even picked catkins with 
both forms of scales from the same trees ; the same confusion pre- 
vailed with regard to the inside color and the aroma of the bark. 
The second observed station of B. lutea is in a small wood, at 
the crossing of two roads in Section 31. Town of Wauwatosa. 
The grove is not more than three acres in extent, and 
apparentlv a remnant of the large swamp formerly ex- 
tending for several miles in a northwest to southeast direction 
in this region. Approaching the wood from the west, it still looks 
like a tamarack swamp. But entering it one finds that the tam- 
arack trees are dying or dead. The ground is strewn with the 
tamarack trunks and branches, and vigorous trees are seen only 
on the western margin, where the vicinity of the ditch along the 
bordering road seems to have kept the moisture conditions more 
favorable. Elsewhere the soil appears to be rapidly drving and 
losing its swampy character. Xo young tamaracks at all can be 
seen, f i ) In place of the larches, hardwoods of various kind have 
come up. all vigorous young trees. Among these the black ash is 
conspicuous for its ,ereater size and age, as if it had arrived at an 
earlier time, when the conditions were not yet ripe for the other 
species. Among these young, broad-leaved trees grow numerous 
specimens of the yellow-birch, all young and apparently thriving. 
1. This is the condition of practically all tamarack swamps in Milwaukee 
Countv and the adjoining territory, notably the former large swamp west of Cal- 
houn in Waukesha County At the latter place, the tamarack is not even spread- 
ing on the wet lands surrounding the forest. 
