he was gone. His children and grandchildren played under it while it was still a young tree. Elms and oaks often live for two or three hundred years and get their names into history. (See Elm.)
Isn't it wonderful that trees keep a record of their birthdays? Every year's growth is a thin layer of green that, as it hardens into wood, is plainly marked in a ring. The rings are bound together with rays like wheel spokes. When lumber is sawed and polished, the ring and ray marks come out in wavy lines, in delicate pencilings, in curls and "eyes," and color bands, very true to type in nearly all trees. So, in a chair or floor or door casing, you can learn to know the different woods. Grown people know many of these woods in houses and furniture. They know just what each kind of tree is good for.
The Indians knew a great deal about woods, although they could not cut down trees. "Give me of your bark, oh birch tree," sang Hiawatha. He wanted the white, unbroken bark of the big, paper birch tree to cover his canoe with. "Give me of your wood, oh ash tree," he sang. He used the tough saplings of the white ash for the frame of his canoe and for his hunting bow. He knew the best firewoods, too. He knew that a hard beech log would hold fire all night, that birch splinters made the best kindling, that pine-knots blazed up for story telling, that wild apple wood glowed with rosy flames like its own pink blossoms.
But we are forgetting our winter pictures in black and white. There are other trees with white, or silvery gray bark as well as the birches. Some willows and poplars, the silver maple and the sycamore, a kind of maple or plane tree, have them. And one birch has a yellow bark. You can always tell the birches in winter by the short, brown or dark gray cross-markings on the bark, and by the slender branches and twigs. The willows have many small, drooping twigs but large branches. They often have long, horizontal roots that push the earth up in ridges, and a little forest of switch-like shoots around their feet. The poplars are much like the willows, but their branches are more erect, often growing in so close to the shaft-like trunk as to make these the slenderest trees, except the pines. Switch-like shoots grow about the poplars, and even on the trunks.
In the winter the bark of orchard fruit trees are warm reds and browns and purplish grays, very bright and clean, like wild rose canes. The trunk of an old apple tree may be gray and scaly, but
