In Winter Woods 389 



The sheet of cork which is wrapped around a 

 branch may lie near its surface or deep in its tissues. 



And their various and sundry ways of wearing 

 their union suits cause marked differences in the 

 appearance of the trees even in winter, for the 

 cracks which begin at the outer surface of trunk or 

 bough will go " clear through" till they come to 

 the cork sheet, wherever that may be. 



If it lies deep, the cracks in the bark are deep, 

 and the ridges between them are high and rough, 

 as they are on the oak. 



The beech, on the contrary, wears its cork-under- 

 robe just beneath its outer dress, and so the rents 

 in the bark are shallow, while in the canoe-birch 

 the cork layer lies on the surface of trunk and 

 boughs, and can be peeled away in thin sheets. 



In some trees curved plates of cork form deep 

 beneath the surface, and as the woody tissue lying 

 outside them dies and dries, masses of bark are, as 

 it were, gouged out of the living trunk. 



When these plates are long and narrow, and are 

 formed horizontally, the bark cracks across the 

 trunk, and peels away in broken rings. But if the 

 long, curving cork-plates stand upright in the 

 tissue of the tree, the bark which they cut off 

 comes away in scales, as it does from the trunks 



