24 LARCH FIE. 



situation, for our frequent heavy and drifting 

 snows in winter are carried by the storm into 

 and lodged among the crowns of such a mass 

 of trees, and it not . unfrequently happens 

 that, after a thaw has come on and lasted 

 a few days, a reaction of frost takes place 

 and hardens the snow which remains, and 

 which may not melt again until the spring, 

 or even until the summer in such a climate 

 as ours, and then the melting snow saturates 

 the crowded trees from top to bottom with 

 water, and there is neither sufficient sun to 

 dry them nor any current of air to drive it 

 out of them, and speedy destruction is the 

 inevitable consequence. 



The larch, of all trees, will not bear the 

 pruning knife. Its branches, as the growth 

 of the tree progresses, as high up as decay is 

 shown, after having performed their office, 

 should be rubbed off gently by the blunt 

 edge of the axe, but " not the breadth of a 

 hair" beyond that. 



