112 



TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



ground, keeping it open for percolation when the snow melts. The forest- 

 cover greatly retards the melting process, lengthening the time to filter 

 down. Being a poor conductor of heat, snow melts from beneath, hence its 

 upper stratum has a tendency to glide forward, in so doing, it gathers up in 

 the woods the leaves and sticks, and the slushy stuff forms itself into 

 little dams at the base of the trees and around the logs and stones, making 

 water-pools even on the hilhsides. The water thus held back, percolates 

 along the roots, saturating all the ground to complete fulness. The result 

 is a subterranean water conservation by whose drainage it reappears in 

 summer for vegetative growth. Strange to say, state and national legis- 

 lature tolerates and encourages a business policy that pays no attention to 

 this conservative arrangement of nature. 



THERMAL ALTERNATIONS. 



Like all other plants, the trees are slow but great absorbers of sun-heat from 

 the air and other sources. The heat-storing process may be so intense and ex- 

 tensive during the germinating and flowering season as to result at night 

 in an atmospheric chill. The German forester Ney, maintains that "the 

 unreasonable frosts of mid-May in Europe, are due to the amount of heat 

 absorbed by plants at that season. " The alternations from cold to 

 heat, and from heat to cold, are interchangeable forces by which precipi- 

 tation becomes possible, and the agent which nature specially employs in 

 these operations, is the forest making dew ana mist, and snow and rain. 



PLANTS OR TREES PER ACRE. 



The following table will be found very convenient, as giving the number 

 of plants or trees on an acre, at various distances apart: 



6 inches apart each way 154,240 



1 foot " " " 43,560 



IK feet " " " 19,360 



2 feet by 1 foot 21,780 



feet apart each way 10,890 



feet by 2 feet 7,260 



feet apart each way 4,840 



" 2,730 



2 



3 



3 



4 



5 



6 



8 



10 



12 



15 



18 



20 



22 



30 



1,750 



1,200 



690 



430 



300 



200 



135 



110 



90. 



50 



