The red birch is easily distinguished from all the other birches by its reddish, loosely peeling bark, which gives the trunk an unkempt, shaggy, and torn appearance. The outer bark separates into flakes which are loose at one end and adhere to the trunk at the other, and these projecting strips look like a fringe. The lower branches often bend down towards the ground in a straggling, irregular fashion, while the upper branches are free and sweeping. It should not be inferred from this description that the red birch is lacking in beauty, for it is a most attractive tree. Its general outline is picturesque, and the soft red color of the peeling epidermis of the bark in the upper branches has a very pleasing effect. The red birch is the only semi-aquatic species among the birches, and its drooping branches hanging over the water add much to the beauty of our streams and rivers. Its wood is light but strong, and is used for furniture, wooden ware, and yokes. The specific name, _nigra_ (black), was given it by Linnæus, the celebrated Swedish botanist,—it seems to have no particular significance. The red birch is found growing on the banks of the Nashua and Merrimac Rivers and beside smaller streams in Massachusetts, but it grows more frequently along river banks in the South than in the North. A small shrub (_Betula pumila_), the dwarf birch, found in rocky pastures in Western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and in the South and West, completes the list of our six native birches. [Sidenote: European White Birch _Betula alba_] _A tree from Europe, extensively cultivated in this country. White, chalky bark. Long, slender, down-sweeping branches. Small buds. Alternate leaf-scars._ The slender, drooping branches of the European white birch are so long and pliant that the slightest breeze sets them swaying in one direction from the trunk, like a shower of rain driven by the wind. The birch does not lose its pendulous grace in mere limp dejection, like most of the weeping varieties of trees that gardeners love to propagate, but it holds its head high and the slender branches droop down,—a striking contrast to the weeping willow and other lachrymose specimens of horticultural art. There have been constant allusions to this tree in English literature. Perhaps the most descriptive is one of Sir Walter Scott’s which refers to the slender, pendulous boughs,— [Illustration: EUROPEAN WHITE BIRCH _Betula alba_ Page 69 ] “Where weeps the birch with silver bark And long dishevelled hair.”