THE ICE-COAT ON THE TREES 165 
tinues long, the morning light discloses scenes of marvelous 
beauty. The orchard has become a veritable fairyland. 
Each slender stem is a column of crystal on which, at every 
bud and angle, is a prism dispensing rainbow colors. The 
drooping ice-encrusted sprays are like wreaths of sparkling 
jewels, and all the world is a-glitter with innumerable points 
of light. 
But this brilliant display is a heavy burden on the trees; 
the stout twigs of sumach and elder bear it easily, but the 
slender twigs of birch and willow are bent prone, and matted 
together in a network of ice. Boughs, rightly placed for 
mutual support, become welded together by a common 
incrustation; but unsupported boughs are often broken by 
the sheer weight of the ice. And if to this burden, there be 
added the stress of rising winds, then great havoc may be 
wrought in the woods. 
The thickness of the ice covering the stems is much affected 
by their character and position. Since the water condenses 
upon them and tends to gather in drops before it freezes, 
smooth erect stems gather less ice because the water slips 
away from them; while rough or horizontal stems acquire a 
thicker crust, and every downwardly directed point or angle 
is tipped with an icicle. Thus Roberts might write in his 
“Silver Show”’: 
“The silvered saplings bending 
Flashed in a rain of gems 
And amethysts and rubies 
Adorned the bramble stems.” 
Slender twigs are usually tough and pliant and not easily 
broken: moreover they grow densely, and being more or 
less interlaced, they lend each other mutual support. The 
hedge becomes one long fenestrated wall of crystal, the twigs 
being encased and conjoined with ice in all directions. So 
joined, the ice supports the twigs; and not the twigs, the ice. 
