NATURE IN ARMOR. 11 



time a long branch of an elm at which I was 

 looking slowly bent lower and lower, and then 

 broke midway with a crack and swung toward 

 the ground. I raised a prostrate cedar bush, 

 whose height was about seven feet, and found 

 that its load of ice seemed to weigh thirty pounds. 

 If this were so, what must the burden of the great 

 trees have been ? Tons, perhaps. .Yet the oaks 

 did not seem to bend an inch. Their stiff heads 

 were raised straight toward the sky, and their 

 immovable arms bristled with icicles. 



About an hour before sunset I pointed my 

 course downward, sighting for the tower of Me- 

 morial Hall rising black against the distant sky. 

 Much ice had fallen from the trees since the 

 forenoon, and there was a ceaseless roar of fall- 

 ing fragments as I passed through the strips of 

 woodland. The temperature had risen enough 

 to loosen the ice armor, and everything from 

 asters to elm-tops was casting it off. 



