Beautiful as are the birch woods of Strathspey (travellers to the North must have been charmed with those on both sides of the railway near Lochinsch Station), it must be confessed that the silver birch does not attain its greatest perfection in Great Britain. Individual trees may be found to compare pretty well with those in Continental woods; but the general average is not so good. I have not seen the birch forests of the Baltic provinces and Central Russia; those who have done so speak enthusiastically of them; but it is from no want of loyalty to the Birks of Aberfeldy that I have to admit that their bark has not the sheen nor their growth the free grace of their kindred in French, German, and Scandinavian forests.
[Illustration: BIRCH (_Betula alba verrucosa_) IN JUNE]
[Illustration: BIRCH (_Betula alba verrucosa_) IN DECEMBER]
Inseparably associated as the birch is with Scottish landscape, poets and painters have never wearied of honouring it. The late David MacWhirter got its beauty rather on the brain, and one turned rather tired of what became a mannerism in his work. Hamilton of Bangour never rang his quaintly iterative changes so tenderly as in his ballad, _The Braes of Yarrow_, the tragedy of a maiden with two lovers. The lovers fight, and one falls--
The comliest swain That e'er pu'd birks on the braes o' Yarrow.
The survivor presses his court, trying in vain to persuade the girl to leave Tweedside and come to his home beside Yarrow.
Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass-- Yellow on Yarrow's braes the gowan; Fair hangs the apple frae the rock, Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowin'.
"Flows Yarrow sweet?" she argues with him--
Flows Yarrow sweet? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed; As green its grass, its gowan as yellow; As sweet smells on its braes the birk, The apple frae its rock as mellow.
The late Professor Veitch laid finger on the only blot in this fair picture. Apples do not hang from rocks either in Tweedside or by Yarrow, but rowan berries do. It is a pity that Hamilton yielded so far to eighteenth century classicism as to introduce the conventional apple. The line would surely have run more smoothly--
But I have wandered away from the birch. Economically, this tree has hitherto been reckoned of indifferent value, though there is an inexhaustible demand for bobbins. Clogmakers, also, will make picturesque encampment among birches of suitable size, and pay a fair price for working up the stems.