EVERGREENS BUILT FOR FIGHTING STORMS 
offer much of a place for the lodgment of snow, or long 
handles by which the wind can pull the tree this way and 
that. The longer limbs are low. This tree is usually 
shaped like a cone since the limbs become shorter and 
shorter from the base to the top. The top of a fir tree is 
very much different from the broad, spreading crown of 
an oak. It is hard to get hold of or to use as a loading 
place for snow. 
Thus built for resisting the severities of winter, the 
members of the pine tree family walk out on rocky cliffs 
fronting the sea and make homes for themselves. They 
climb up mountains above the place where the broad¬ 
leaved trees, even though they shed their foliage in win¬ 
ter, can survive, and there get along quite nicely. They 
seek homes far to the north, where summers are short and 
winters long and severe, and overrun an empire where it 
is beyond the possibility of other trees to compete with 
them for space. Because they have adapted themselves 
to this task of outwitting wind and winter, they have 
come into a world that is all their own. 
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