28 PROTECTION OF WOODLANDS. 



snow-break and snow-pressure, when snow falling early in the 

 season finds them with foliage still attached to the crown. 

 Among conifers, the brittle Scots Pine suffers more from snow- 

 break, whilst the tough, thickly-foliaged Spruce suffers more from 

 snow-pressure during the earlier stages of development. Among 

 the broad-leaved species, Alder and Acacia suffer occasionally from 

 snow-break, on account of their brittle wood, whilst young crops 

 of Oak and Beech are occasionally damaged by snow-pressure, 

 owing to their retaining their dead foliage often long into autumn. 



Snow-break mostly takes places high up near the top end, as 

 may be noted in the frequency of double leading-shoots and 

 bayonet-like growth of Spruce in tracts exposed to danger from 

 snow ; but it can also occur in the lower portions of the stem, 

 especially if there be any weak point from former injury, left 

 behind in consequence of tapping for resin, or stripping of bark 

 by red-deer in the case of Spruce, or of cankerous fungoid growth 

 on the Silver Fir. The danger is increased by unequal pressure 

 owing to irregularity of the branch development, as on hillsides 

 and at the edges of the forest, whilst in snowfall during windy 

 weather the side exposed to the wind is always most heavily laden. 



So far as the age of the crop is concerned, thickets suffer from 

 snow-pressure only, but the more so the denser they are ; hence 

 thick sowings and natural reproductions suffer more than planta- 

 tions, and unthinned woods more than such as have been thinned. 

 Older crops from the pole-forest stage of growth onwards are 

 damaged only by snow-break ; the danger is diminished as the 

 crop grows older, and the proportion becomes more favourable 

 between the length of stem and its diameter, the danger of break- 

 age being commensurable therewith. 



In conclusion, it may also be mentioned that extensive damage 

 from the accumulation of snow only occurs in high timber forest, 

 coppice being almost entirely exempt from danger, and that in copse 

 or coppice under standards, only the youngest class of slender 

 standards gets bent down to the ground, and becomes unsuited for 

 the purposes intended, if the pressure be continued for any length of 

 time. Those who advocate the superiority of crops in which there 

 is no succession of separate annual falls, but all the age-classes 

 occur promiscuously over the whole area, and the annual fall takes 

 place by selection of the mature timber throughout the whole 

 crop, claim that such are much less exposed to danger from snow 



