TEB. 10, 1906.] 

broadly oval leaves, less narrowly pointed than 
those of the gray birch, with short stout stems 
which are nct hairy. 
The Red or River Birch. 
The red birch is a more southern tree than the 
canoe birch, occurring along river banks from 
southern New Hampshire southward along the 
Atlantic coast to Florida and westward along the 
Gulf coast to Texas. Its ragged bark is a dis- 
tinctive characteristic as well as the hairy twigs 
and leaf-stems and the broadly wedge-shaped 
bases of the leaves. The polien-bearing flowers 
appear in early spring as long festoons from the 
tips of the more thrifty twigs, two or three of 
the catkins generally hanging side by side. The 
catkins of the seed-bearing flowers are short and 
broad and stand erect along the sides of the twigs. 
The seed from these develops in early summer, 
long before that of the other Lirches ripens. 
The Black Birch. 
_ The sweet or black birch, which is also called 
the cherry birch, is one of those trees well known 
to the woodsman because of the aromatic taste of 
the bark. It is a widely distributed species, oc- 
curring from Newfoundland and Ontario south 

Winter Twigs of Gray Birch. 
Showing undeveloped pollen-bearing catkins at the tips. 
to Illinois, Indiana and Tennessee. The bark of 
the young twigs is of a shinine reddish brown 
color with long, slender, acutely pointed leaf buds. 
The blossoms in spring are very conspicuous, the 
long pollen-bearing catkins hanging from the ends 
of the twigs in great numbers and forming one 
of the most graceful sights to be found in the 
woods in early spring. The leaves are very simi- 
lar to those of the yellow birch, having com- 
monly, however, the base distinctly heart-shaped. 
The bark of the tree is quite different from that 
of the yellow birch, being blackish and not so 
loosely peeling. : 
The Yellow Birch. 
The yellow birch is known to every woodsman, 
being one of those trees whose trunk is so dis- 
tinctive that it is easily recognized even by the 
novice in woodcraft. It is one of the most abun- 
dant trees in the hard-wood forests of New Eng- 
land and is very largely used for fuel, lumber and 
paper pulp. The bark of the twigs has much less 
of the characteristic strongly aromatic flavor of 
that of the black birch and the fruits, which ma- 
ture in autumn, are more ovate in the yellow 
birch and more cylindrical i in the black birch. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

THE TAME WILD DUCKS OF WEST PALM BEACH. 
Arkansas Giant Cypresses. 
Our picture of the ceiba tree of Nassau (issue 
of Jan. 13) prompted Dr. James A. Henshall to 
send us the photographs of cypress trees, repro- 
duced on pages 217 and 210. 
The tree shown-on page 217 is the largest of a 
group of four cypréss trees on the shore of Mud 
Lake, near St. Francis River, above Cow Bayou, 
in Arkansas. The figure is Dr. Henshall. The 
knees of the cypress are shown just outside of 
the buttresses. This tree was sixty-three feet in 
circumference three feet above the ground. The 
other three trees were not quite so large, but 
none were less than forty feet in circumference. 
The picture on page 219 shows two of the 
group, but one looks smaller than it really is on 
account of being in the rear. The figures are a 
number of sportsmen from Cincinnati on a hunt- 
ing and fishing outing, with the pleasure steam- 
boat C. O., belonging to the late Judge Nicholas 
Longworth, father of Representative Nicholas 
Longworth. In the picture Judge Longworth is on 
the extreme left in foreground, and Dr. Henshall 
on the extreme right. The figure on the extreme 
left in the background is Capt. Wesley Doss, an 
old and well known Mississippi pilot who lost his 
life a few years ago at the burning of a steamboat. 
Another Tame Crow. 
A TAME crow was owned by a family in a vil- 
lage one and a half miles from my residence. 
This family ran a hack several times a day to the 
railroad station, one mile distant. For several 
weeks this young crow attempted to accompany 
the hack to the station but was invariably at- 
tacked at the outskirts of the village by some 
kingbirds, who quickly drove him back to the 
house in which he at once took refuge. This 
crow became such an inveterate thief that the 
family gave him away to a young lawyer in the 
neighborhood. He kept him confined in his office 
till he became attached to his new home, when 
he allowed him to fly about the neighborhood. 
Although this young lawyer was fairly itching 
for business he soon had more “petty larceny” 
cases than he could attend to and was compelled 
to dispose of his crow, which soon went where 
all bad crows go. Mie P 
The Wiles of a Mother Teal. 
LAKE KosHKONONG, Wis.—While we were go- 
ing up to the slough after pike, late one July 
afternoon, we saw a striking illustration of pa- 
rental protection among our feathered friends. 
We were rowing leisurely along, when all of a 
sudden out of the weeds on the river bank flut- 
tered a female bluewing teal. We stopped, sup- 
posing that the bird was hurt, for she acted as 
though her left wing was broken. She continued 
to flutter in this way until she reached the mid- 
dle of the river, when she stopped, righted her- 
self, and gave a peculiar call, which, to our sur- 
prise, was answered in a few seconds by eight 
young teal, who, while the mother had been 
maneuvering, had gained a distance of six or 
eight rods up the river. As soon as the call was 
answered, the old bird flew to them and hastened 
them along, talking to them as they swam, until 
they had gained a considerable distance further 
up. Then she swam across the stream with 
them, the young ones following in her wake. All 
this happened in a very short time and we were 
astonished at the skill and seeming reason which 
she displayed. REx. 
White-Breasted inenis: 
I once had an old hunter in Florida tell me 
that a bear with a white spot on the breast was 
the most dangerous of all the wild animals on the 
peninsula, the panther not excepted. I have also 
heard this belief spoken of among old hunters in 
parts of New Jersey. 
