Birch

trees or shrubs growing principally in the north temperate zone. The birch ranges farther north than any other deciduous forest tree. Some thirty-five kinds are to be found in the United States, Canada, northern Europe, and part of South America and Central Asia. A shrub-birch is found in the colder sections of South America. The timber of many species,--the white, the red, and the yellow,--is valuable for fuel, furniture, and inside finish. Curly birch finishes almost as handsome as bird's-eye-maple. Birches are classed with oaks, hazlenuts, and alders on account of their fruit, which is a naked nutlet inclosed, when ripe, in dry scales. Birches vary in size from large trees to the dwarf birch easily mistaken for hazel brush or willow. Birches are exceedingly graceful trees. Several species, including weeping birches as well as a handsome species from Japan, are valuable park trees.

The outer bark of many species of birch separates into thin layers which may be used as paper. Many trinkets, as napkin rings, toy canoes, baskets, and the like, are made of the outer bark of the American paper or canoe birch. The entire bark of this tree is perhaps a third of an inch thick, and contains an oil or resin that renders it water-tight. It is much used for canoes. The bark, taken from the tree in large sections, is sewed over a frame of light strips of wood. The seams are closed with pitch.

Woodsmen find birch bark an invaluable source of fuel. Pieces may be stripped from living trees, or, if rotten trees are at hand, the rotten wood can be shaken out until the bark is empty, like a piece of stove pipe, sound and oily, ready to catch fire in any weather, wet or dry.

Vast areas in Russia are covered exclusively with white birch. The Russian peasants make wine out of its sap, and, in time of famine, grind the bark for bread. They make millions of shoes out of the bark; and spoons, platters, cups, and plates of the wood. Russian emigrants bring their effects to this country in birch bark chests curiously ornamented.

The pliant twigs of the birch are proverbially tough. Bound in small bundles they made the broom or besom of our ancestors, and are still used for that purpose. The Roman magistrate ordered bundles of birch rods (fasces) carried before him as a sign of his authority, and to this day the schoolmaster is called a "wielder of the birch."