A LABRADOR SPRING 
of the snow, suddenly leaped up to greet the 
sun. It was still bare as in winter, but in a 
few days it would be clothed with the fresh 
green that its recently escaped companions had 
already assumed. 
Birches and especially alders accommodate 
themselves to the winter snows, and submis- 
sively bend before them, but with the coming 
of summer their bonds melt away and they 
arise unharmed from their supine position. 
In this winter pressure the birch very rarely 
breaks, the alder, almost never. Not so the 
spruce, the larch and the fir, and green-stick 
fractures of these trees abound, and sometimes 
in the lee of a bank where the snow settles 
in deep, heavy masses, these trees show the 
scars of many winters by a series of partial 
breaks. In some of these the trunk assumes 
a position at right angles with its original 
growth, and parallel with the ground; in 
other cases the trunk points downward at first, 
but in any event, unless fatally wounded, the 
tree again aspires, only to be beaten down 
again perchance in another winter. Around 
the breaks calli in the form of rounded 
masses of wood form just as they do about 
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