Birch
Birch names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Birch trees or shrubs growing principally in the north temperate zone
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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." The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees, Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves. --Lowell, An Indian Summer Reverie.
Birch the English name of the trees and shrubs belonging to the botanical genus betula
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the English name of the trees and shrubs belonging to the botanical genus betula. The common birch (betula alba) has ovate-deltoid, acute, doubly ser. rate leaves. Its flowers are in catkins, come forth in which April and May. It grows best in healthy soils and in Alpine . districts The drooping or weeping birch (B. pendula) is a variety of this tree. It grows wild on the European continent and in Asia. The wood of the birch is tough and white. It is used for making brooms; it is often burned into charcoal. The oil obtained from the white rind is used in tanning Russia leather. The Russians turn it to account also as a vermifuge and as a balsam in the cure of wounds. In some countries the bark of the birch is made into hats and drinking cups. The B. nana, or dwarf birch, grows in the Highlands of Scotland, in Lapland, etc. It is a small shrub, one or two feet high. The Laplander uses the wood for fuel, and the leaves, spread over with a reindeer's skin, for a bed. B. lenta is the mahogany birch, mountain mahogany, sweet birch, or cherry birch of North America. Its leaves are fragrant, and have been used as a substitute for tea. The canoe birch, of which the North American Indians constructed their portable canoes, is the B. papyracea.
Birch SAMUEL, an English Orientalist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SAMUEL, an English Orientalist, born in London, Nov. 3, 1813. He entered the British Museum as Assistant Keeper of Antiquities, in 1836, and ultimately became Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. He was especially famed for his capacity and skill in Egyptology, and was associated with Baron Bunsen in his work on Egypt. His principal works include "Gallery of Antiquities" es", (1842); "Catalogue alogue of Greek Vases" (1851); "Ancient Pottery" (1858); "Egypt from the Earliest Times" (1875). He edited "Records of the Past," from 1873 to 1880. He died Dec. 27, 1885.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The botany here still holds, though the names have shifted: Collier's 1921 Betula alba is no longer a single accepted species, having been split into the silver birch (B. pendula) and downy birch (B. pubescens), and the canoe birch it calls B. papyracea is now B. papyrifera. The practical uses have moved on more than the trees have — bark canoes are a heritage craft rather than transport, while birch today mostly goes into plywood (Finnish and Baltic birch ply is a global standard) and into xylitol, the "birch sugar" sweetener extracted from its wood. One genuinely new thing: a 5,700-year-old lump of chewed birch-bark pitch from Syltholm in Denmark yielded a complete human genome in 2019, something no writer in 1910 or 1921 could have imagined bark doing.
Written for this edition, 2026.