212 IMPORTANCE OF SNOW. 
water runs off in the winter by superficial water-courses, except 
in rare cases of sudden thaw, and there can be no question that 
much the greater part of the snow deposited in the forest is 
slowly melted and absorbed by the earth. 
The immense importance of the forest, as a reservoir of this 
stock of moisture, becomes apparent, when we consider that a 
large proportion of the summer rain either flows into the valleys 
and the rivers, because it falls faster than the ground can im- 
bibe it; or, if absorbed by the warm superficial strata, is evapo- 
rated from them without sinking deep enough to reach wells 
and springs, which, of course, depend much on winter rains 
and snows for their entire supply. This observation, though 
specially true of cleared and cultivated grounds, is not wholly 
inapplicable to the forest, particularly when, as is too often 
the case in Europe, the underwood and the decaying leaves are 
removed. 
one with the bulb an inch below the surface of powdery snow; one on the 
surface of the ground beneath the snow, then four inches deep; and one in 
the open air, forty feet above the ground, on the north side of a building, he 
found, at 5 P.M., the first thermometer at —1.5° Centigrade, the second at 0°, 
and the third at +2.5°; at 7 A.M. the next morning, the first stood at —12°, 
the second at —3.5°, and the third at —3°; at 5.30 the same evening No. 1 
stood at —1.4°, No. 2 at 0°, and No. 3 at + 3°. Other experiments were 
tried, and though the temperature was affected by the radiation, which varied 
with the hour of the day and the state of the sky, the upper surface of the 
snow was uniformly colder than the lower, or than the open air. 
According to the Report of the Department of Agriculture for May and June, 
1872, Mr. C. G. Prindle, of Vermont, in the preceding winter, found, for four 
successive days, the temperature immediately above the snow at 138° below 
zero ; beneath the snow, which was but four inches deep, at 19° above zero ; 
and under a drift two feet deep, at 27° above. 
On the borders and in the glades of the American forest, violets and other 
small plants begin to vegetate as soon as the snow has thawed the soil around 
their roots, and they are not unfrequently found in full flower under two or 
three feet of snow.—American Naturalist, May, 1869, pp. 155, 156. 
In very cold weather, when the ground is covered with light snow, flocks 
of the grouse of the Eastern States’ often plunge into the snow about sunset, 
and pass the night in this warm shelter. If the weather moderates before 
morning, a frozen crust is sometimes formed on the surface too strong to be 
broken by the birds, which consequently perish. 
