CAPABILITIES OF THE KOOTEXAVS. 17 



bring forth, call for the application of a " forest " of 

 friendly supports. Consequently, ^vere it not for the 

 compulsory rest of the winter, the trees would pretty 

 soon exhaust their natural energies. 



Although the winter in the Kootenays, mild when 

 viewed with Canadian eyes, severe when regarded in 

 the light of English experience, thus provides com- 

 pensation, as it were, to the exhaustive output of the 

 trees' summer activities, it befriends them in yet 

 another way. 



Winter lasts, I was told, as a rule, from the middle 

 of December to the middle or end of March, and 

 during all that time the ground is under snow. This 

 protects the roots against the frost. Then, again, the 

 snow, melting on the mountains through the spring 

 and on into the early summer, sets up a subsoil irriga- 

 tion, which goes on practically all through the hot 

 wrecks of the mid-summer season. In this way 

 aqueous nutrition is supplied to the trees by a natural, 

 and, indeed, automatic, process of filtration, and they 

 receive the moisture, not at any one time in excess, 

 but all the time in well-proportioned measure pretty 

 much as they need it. And this process of natural 

 root-watering is greatly facilitated by the situation of 

 the orchards at the foot of the mountains and the more 

 or less gentle angle at which they slope down to the 

 lake. This purely mechanical and gradual distribu- 

 tion of the "seepage" water co-operates with the 

 heavy evaporation and consequent foliage-watering of 

 summer to explain the fact that irrigation is less needed 

 in this part of British Columbia than in most other 

 regions of the province except the coast. 



But the fact is also, and principally, accounted for 



c 



