In the Midwinter Forest 27 



to tree enemies. The trees most likely to be split 

 with frost are those with a great difference of 

 weight between their inner or " heart " wood and 

 their outer or " sap " wood. 



Another woe which weather works upon trees 

 is what lumbermen call " sun-scald." The scars 

 made by this misfortune (Fig. 12) are most often 

 observed upon smooth-barked trees, such as the 

 beech, pear, or linden. A sun-scald is, like a frost- 

 crack, a lengthwise wound, and like a frost-crack 

 it is most often found on the southwest side of 

 the trunk. But we can almost always tell whether 

 a tree has been scarred by heat or cold. A frost- 

 crack was once a clean straight split, and the re- 

 sulting scar is long, straight, and narrow. The 

 sun-scald was a great bursting of the bark, an 

 irregular spreading wound. 



The trees which stand alone in the fields, with 

 light and air all about them, spread their branches 

 as they will. They are not lopped and shorn by 

 "natural pruning," as their forest (Fig. 13) 

 sisters are ; they may have beautiful side branches 

 and keep them. Such trees bear fruit abundantly. 

 Every country boy knows that the meadow trees 

 are the ones best worth visiting for nuts in the 

 autumn; for nuts grow near the tips of the 

 boughs, so that the more a tree branches the more 

 it bears. 



But such meadow trees, although they do not 

 suffer the severe natural pruning which forest 



