How beautifully this peculiar character is described 
by Professor Wilson, — 
-“ On the green slope 
Of a romantic glade we sat us down, 
Amid the fragrance of the yellow broom; 
While o’er our heads the weeping birch-tree stream’d 
Its branches, arching like a fountain shower.” 
Notwithstanding its fragility of appearance, the birch is 
a most hardy tree, refusing no soil or situation, however 
unpromising: indeed two of the species—the dwarf 
birch, Betula liana, and the hoary alder, Belula incana— 
will grow where scarcely any thing else will, approaching 
nearer the arctic pole than any other tree, except the 
dwarf willow. That diminutive species of birch, Betula 
nana, has lately been discovered in the Highlands, 
where a strange and superstitious notion is prevalent 
accounting for its stunted growth, which they imagine 
is owing to its having furnished the rod with which 
Christ was scourged. 
To the inhabitants of finely-timbered countries, the 
birch, distinct from considerations of pictorial effect, is 
a tree of small value; but to such as dwell in high 
latitudes, it is inestimable, holding, in their regal’d, the 
same rank in the vegetable kingdom as the rein-deer 
