FEBRUARY 27 



sandy soil,' it is a small tree of noble aspect, twelve 

 to twenty-eight feet high. In form it is extremely 

 variable, for sometimes it shoots up on a single stem 

 and looks like an Italian Cypress or like the upright 

 Chinese Juniper, while at other times it will have two 

 or more tall spires and a dense surrounding mass of 

 lower growth, while in other cases it will be Hke a 

 quantity of young trees growing close together, and 

 yet the trees in all these varied forms may be nearly 

 of an age. 



The action of snow is the reason of this unlikeness 

 of habit. If, when young, the tree happens to have 

 one main stem strong enough to shoot up alone, and 

 if at the same time there come a sequence of winters 

 without much snow, there will be the tall, straight, 

 cypress-like tree. But if, as is more commonly the 

 case, the growth is divided into a number of stems of 

 nearly equal size, sooner or later they are sure to be 

 laid down by snow. Such a winter storm as that of 

 the end of December 1886 was especially disastrous to 

 Junipers. Snow came on early in the evening in this 

 district, when the thermometer was barely at freez- 

 ing point and there was no wind. It hung on the 

 trees in clogging masses, with a lowering temperature 

 that was soon below freezing. The snow still falling 

 loaded them more and more ; then came the fatal 

 wind, and all through that night we heard the break- 

 ing trees. When morning came there were eighteen 

 inches of snow on the ground, and all the trees that 



