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LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
offers the most pleasing variety to the eye, when seen in con- 
nexion with other foliage. Several kinds, as the Yellow and 
the Black birches, are really stately trees, and form fine groups 
by themselves. Indeed, most beautiful and varied masses 
might be formed by collecting together all the different kinds, 
with their characteristic barks, branches, and foliage. 
As an additional recommendation, many of these trees 
grow on the thinnest and most indifferent soils, whether 
moist or dry ; and in cold, bleak, and exposed situations, as 
well as in warm and sheltered places. 
We shall enumerate the different kinds, as follows : — , 
The Canoe birch, Boleau a Canot , of the French Cana- 
dians, ( B . papyracea ,) sometimes also called the Paper birch, 
is according to Michaux, most common in the forests of the 
eastern states, north of latitude 43°, and in the Canadas. 
There it attains its largest size, sometimes seventy feet in 
height, and three in diameter. Its branches are slender, 
flexible, covered with a shining brown bark, dotted with 
white ; and on trees of moderate size, the bark of the trunk 
is of a brilliant white : it is often used for roofing houses, 
for the manufacture of baskets, boxes, etc., besides its most 
important use for canoes, as already mentioned. The leaves, 
borne on petioles four or five lines long, are of a middling 
size, oval, unequally denticulated, smooth, and of a dark 
green colour. 
The White birch, (B. populifolia ,) is a tree of much 
smaller size, generally from twenty to thirty-five feet in 
height : it is found in New- York and the other middle states, 
as well as at the north. The trunk, like the foregoing, is cov- 
ered with silvery bark; the branches are slender, and 
generally drooping when the tree attains considerable size. 
The leaves are smooth on both surfaces, heart-shaped at the 
