timber, and most useful for many important
purposes. It sometimes grows to the height
of eighty feet, and its branches, which
generally shoot at a right angle from the
trunk, give it a wide-spreading and luxuriant
tuft. The fruit of this tree is an oily nut,
called a "butternut," which the settlers
pickle. The bark of the tree makes an excellent
yellow dye. Butternut-wood is a most
valuable timber; it has great powers of
resistance to heat and moisture. For coach-
panels it is in request from its lightness,
toughness, and the manner in which it
receives paint. At Fredericton, butternut wood
is used generally for furniture. The grain is
handsome, easily worked, and susceptible
of a good polish. Some of the public
buildings of Fredericton have been fitted up
with butternut wood with a most pleasing
effect; yet this timber is never imported
into this country, although it can be
procured in large quantities and blocks, and is
easily propagated. Near the great butternut
tree you will find the flowery dog-wood,
a most useful timber from its hardness and
the beauty of its grain. Its diminutive
proportions, however, render it useless
except for tool handles, or other equally small
articles.

Upon a gentle declivity, or in. a valley of
rich soil, you find the tall and slender canoe-
birch, another most valuable and beautiful
tree. The wood of this birch exhibits,
immediately below its first ramification, gentle
indulations of the fibre, which American
joiners turn to account for inlaid work. The
bark of this birch, however, is the most
valuable part of it. From this bark the
Indians manufacture various ornaments and
build their canoes.

In close proximity to the ash, and
surrounded with black spruce and hemlock
spruce, you find a tall tree with a stem like a
shaft of gold. Its lowest branch is forty feet
from the ground. This is the yellow birch,
esteemed by cabinet-makers for its durability,
and its handsome appearance when polished;
large quantities of it reach Europe. It is
from the bark of this tree that the empyreumatic
oil is extracted with which Russian
leather is dressed, and it is from this oil that
prepared Russian leather obtains its peculiar
odour. The most useful of the American
birches, however, is that species known to the
Canadians as cherry birch, and to the inhabitants of New Brunswick as black birch. It is
imported into this country in large quantities.
Under water it is almost imperishable; but
its tendency to warp when dry, detracts
greatly from its value for furniture. For that
part of vessels which is under water, this
wood is extensively used. Its sap yields
excellent vinegar, and its leaves, when rubbed
and dried, emit a pleasant perfume, or make
a refreshing infusion when steeped in milk
and sugar. Its inner bark is valuable for
tanning.

You ramble on, pushing your way through
the dense underwood, starting many hares,
catching a glance, perhaps, at rare intervals,
of a quiet fox making his disappearance on
tip-toe with grotesque caution, or pausing in
astonishment at the shrill cries of some of the
great birds that flaunt lazily about in the air.
When you get upon low moist ground you
find the common alder and the black alder
growing in thick clusters. The wood of the
alder takes black better than any other
timber; from this property chiefly it derives
its value. With sulphate of iron the bark
forms a good black dye for wool, and this
dye is not unfrequently used by American
hatters.

To see the wild cherry tree to advantage
you must take a forest ramble about the end
of August. You will then find the wild
cherries hanging in rich profusion above you.
You will seldom find the wild cherry tree of
New Brunswick exceed thirty-five feet in
height, with a trunk averaging from eight to
ten inches in diameter. The wood is of a dull
light-red tint, which deepens, with age, into a
brilliant brown. In the United States, where
the tree grows to a large size, it is so worked
that it rivals the beauty of the finest
mahogany. The settlers of New Brunswick turn
the wild cherries of their forests to account
by extracting a liqueur from it, which, when
carefully prepared, is said to outrival the
Kirschwasser made from the cherries of the
Black Forest. Now and then in your forest
rambles your sense of smell will be gratified
with the odour emitted from that almost
useless, though graceful tree, the balsam
poplar. This odour comes from a yellow gum
which exudes from the spring-buds of the
tree. The American aspen is a tender, graceful
tree; the larger kind is a valuable wood,
equal in richness, when carefully polished, to
satin-wood.

It has been, and probably is still, a matter
of dispute which tree is the monarch of the
North American forests. The oak, of which
Englishmen are so proud, is a puny, sickly
plant in new Brunswick, overshadowed by
the butternut and cherry-birch; but the
rambler, who has a sense of the beautiful,
will give a decided supremacy to the beech.
All botanists have united in extolling the
magnificent feathery foliage of the beech; its
grand proportions, its roots, like the claws of
a giant stretched along the surface of the
earth around it, then suddenly plunged below.
The traveller in New Brunswick will
suddenly find himself buried in a dense forest
consisting entirely of these noble trees—such
a forest is one of the grandest scenes in
nature. The white birch depends for its
preservation upon its marvellous beauty,
inasmuch as it can minister to the wants of man
only in the shape of firewood. The red birch
is less ornamental, but more useful than its
gorgeous brother. Red beech timber is
stronger and tougher than oak, but less stiff.