RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 
385 
than half a dozen houses of the kind in the whole county. The 
rounded, double-pitched roofs, so common in the older parts of 
the country, and the shingled walls, also, found so frequently on 
old farm-houses of Long Island, New Jersey, and the neighbor- 
hood of New York, are very rare here ; probably there are not a 
dozen double-pitched roofs in the county, and we do not know of 
one building with shingled sides. 
Certainly there is not much to boast of among us in the way 
of architecture as yet, either in town or couiatry ; but our rural 
buildings are only seen amid the orchards and fields of the farms, 
or smTOunded by the trees and gardens of the villages, so that 
their defects are, perhaps, less striking, relieved, as they gener- 
ally are, by an air of thrift and comfort, and softened by the 
pleasing features of the surrounding landscape, 
Saturday, 18</«. — Although the foliage has now entirely fallen, 
yet the diSerent kinds of seeds and nuts still hanging on the naked 
branches give them a fuller character than belongs to the depths 
of winter. The catkins on the different birches thicken the spray 
of these trees veiy perceptibly ; these are of two sorts, the fer- 
tile ones are more full than the sterile heads ; both grow to- 
gether on the same branch, but in different positions. 
There are as many as six kinds of birches growing in this State : 
the canoe birch, the largest of all, sometimes seventy feet high, 
and three feet in diameter, and which grows as far south as the 
Catskills ; the Indians make their canoes of its bark, sewing them 
with the fibrous roots of the white spruce. The cherry birch, or 
black birch, is also a northern variety, and very common here ; it 
is used for cabinet work. Then there is the yellow birch, another 
northern variety, and a useful tree. The red birch, also a tree 
