THE BIRCHES Grace and gentility of appearance are attributes of this most interesting, attractive, and valuable family of trees. Shabby gentility, one may insist, thinking of the untidy, frayed-out edges that adorn the silky outer bark of almost every birch tree in the woods. (See illustration, page 102.) Not one of them, however, but lends a note of cheerfulness to the landscape. There is beauty and daintiness in leaf, flower, and winged seed, and despite the inferiority of most birch wood, the history of the family is a long story of use fulness to the human race.
About thirty species of birches grow in the Northern Hemisphere, ten of them are North American. The white birch of Europe extends across the northern half of Asia, and is cultivated in delicate cut-leaved and weeping forms, as a lawn and park tree in this country.