A LABRADOR SPRING 



of the snow, suddenly leaped up to greet the 

 sun. It was still bare as in winter, but in a 

 few days it would be clothed with the fresh 

 green that its recently escaped companions had 

 already assumed. 



Birches and especially alders accommodate 

 themselves to the winter snows, and submis- 

 sively bend before them, but with the coming 

 of summer their bonds melt away and they 

 arise unharmed from their supine position. 

 In this winter pressure the birch very rarely 

 breaks, the alder, almost never. Not so the 

 spruce, the larch and the fir, and green-stick 

 fractures of these trees abound, and sometimes 

 in the lee of a bank where the snow settles 

 in deep, heavy masses, these trees show the 

 scars of many winters by a series of partial 

 breaks. In some of these the trunk assumes 

 a position at right angles with its original 

 growth, and parallel with the ground; in 

 other cases the trunk points downward at first, 

 but in any event, unless fatally wounded, the 

 tree again aspires, only to be beaten down 

 again perchance in another winter. Around 

 the breaks calli in the form of rounded 

 masses of wood form just as they do about 



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