216 Our Field and Forest Trees 



feathered assistants take refuge in pine woods and 

 in cedar clumps. 



Where winters are too long, or winds too fierce 

 for broad-leaved trees, there we find the gymno- 

 sperms. 



Their wood contains a smaller proportion of 

 water than does the wood of broad-leaved trees, 

 so that they can live where there is little moisture 

 at their roots, on steep slopes, on edges of bluffs, 

 and in crannies of the rocks. 



They live where broad-leaved trees cannot and 

 will not. They save valley lands from landslide 

 and from flood, " bind the tottering edge of cleft 

 and chasm, and fringe with sudden tints of 

 unhoped-for spring the arctic edges of retreating 

 desolation." 



