About a hundred years ago a Beech tree was found in Germany whose young leaves were dark purple red, and never became green. Young plants from this strange tree were much sought after, and now in many parts of the country you see red or copper beeches, as we usually call them.
Beech wood is used in various ways. In France the peasants make it into shoes—wooden shoes called sabots, which keep out the damp better than those made of any other wood. It is also used in ship-building and for making cheap furniture; but Beech wood is not nearly so valuable as that of the Oak, or Ash, or Elm.
PLATE III
THE BIRCH
“Sweet bird of the meadow, soft be thy nest,
Thy mother will wake thee at morn from thy rest:
She has made a soft nest, little redbreast, for thee,
Of the leaves of the birch, and the moss of the tree.”
—Leyden.
The Birch tree is the daintiest and most fairy-like of all our forest trees, and, strange to say, it is one of the hardiest. Who would believe that the delicate tracery of purple twigs and branches, which looks like fairy fretwork against the grey wintry sky, could thrive in places where the sturdy Oak tree dies?
In the far, far north, in Lapland, where the ground is snow-covered all the year, the Birch tree flourishes, and many are the uses to which it is put in that dreary land.