Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/667

 BIPONT EDITIONS BIRCH 647 collected three volumes of his Melanges seien- tifiques et litteraires. BIPONT EDITIONS, famous editions of the Latin classics, published in the city of Deux- Ponts or Zweibrucken (Lat. Bipontium), in the Rhenish Palatinate. The publication was be- gun in 1779, but after the French conquest was finished in Strasburg. The collection forms 50 vols. 8vo. BIRCH (betula), a genus of monoecious trees or shrubs, which have as generic features both sterile and fertile flowers in scaly catkins, three of each under each bract, with no involucre to the broadly winged nutlet which results from a naked ovary. The sterile catkins are long and drooping, formed in summer, remaining naked through the succeeding winter, and expanding their golden flowers in early spring, preceding the leaves. The fertile catkins are oblong or cylindrical, protected by scales through the winter, and developed with the leaves. The Leaves and Catkin of White Birch. outer bark is usually separable in thin horizon- tal sheets; the twigs and leaves are often spicy and aromatic, and the foliage is mostly thin and light. The birch and the alder (almis) were classified in the same genus by Linnsus in his later works, but are now generally regarded as distinct by botanists. There are 19 recognized species of birch, for the most part lofty-growing and ornamental trees, found native in Asia, Eu- rope, and America, and almost all preferring the cold regions of the northern latitudes. The most widely extended of them is B. alba, or common white birch, a native of Europe, and found in America, near the coast, from Penn- sylvania to Maine, which thrives in every kind of difficult and sterile soil, but decays where the ground is rich. It is found, though dwarfed in size, higher on the Alps than any other tree, approaches near to the icy regions of the north, and is almost the only tree which Greenland produces. It has a chalk- white bark, and trian- gular, very taper-pointed, shining leaves, trem- ulous as those of an aspen. It serves many pur- poses of domestic economy. The bark is em- ployed by the Greenlanders, Laplanders, and inhabitants of Kamtchatka in covering their Trunk of White Birch. huts and in making baskets and ropes. An in- fusion of the leaves makes a yellow dye, and is also drunk like tea by the Finns ; and the Rus- sians and Swedes prepare from the sap of the trunk a fermented liquor resembling champagne. The most graceful tree of the genus is the B. pendwla, growing both in mountainous situa- tions and bogs, from Lapland to the subalpine parts of Italy and Asia. Its popular name is the weeping birch, and it is distinguished for its Weeping Birch. suppleness and the graceful bend and falling in- clination of its long boughs. Its picturesque appearance, with its white and brilliant bark and gleaming, odoriferous leaves, makes it a