There is also a dwarf, or shrub, birch. The list, you
see, is quite a long one."
"What kind grow in _our_ woods?" asked Clara.
"You certainly know of one kind," was the reply--"the black, or sweet,
birch, which we have all tried and like so well. Besides this, there is
the white, or little gray, birch, which is seldom over twenty-five or
thirty feet high. It is, however, a graceful and beautiful object,
enjoying to an eminent decree the lightness and airiness of the birch
family, and spreading out its glistening leaves on the ends of a very
slender and often pensile spray with an indescribable softness. An
English poet has called this tree the
"'most beautiful
Of forest-trees, the lady of the woods.'"
The children laughed at the idea of calling a tree a _lady_, it seemed
so comical; but Miss Harson said that she thought this was a very good
description of a slender, graceful tree.
[Illustration: WHITE-BIRCH LEAF.]
"Four or five inches," she continued, "will span its waist, or trunk,
and this seems a very good reason for calling it _little_. Another name
for this tree is poplar birch, because the triangular-shaped leaves,
which taper to a very long, slender point, have a habit of trembling
like those of the poplars. The branches are of a dark chocolate color
which contrasts very prettily with the grayish-white trunk, and their
extreme slenderness causes them to droop somewhat like those of the
willow.
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