Snow and Timber.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 13, 26 March 1913, Page 61

Snow and Timber.

Few would imagine t-hat the absence of snow would double the price of limber. The greater part of our common timber comes from the forests of Canada, .Scandinavia, and Russia. All these countries suffer from a very severe winter. For nearly five months of the year their surface is buried deep under a mantle of snow, and the thermometer in the heart of the greatest pine forests not uncommonly falls to thirty degrees below zero, i.e., sixty-two degrees of frost. Snow is one of the best non-conduetors of heat or cold in the world, and when the fall is a foot deep a thermometer showing sixty degrees on its surface will, if buried beneath .the snow, rise to about thirty degrees. The snow, therefore, is an enormous blanket protecting the roots of the trees from the intense cold, besides covering the natural warmth of the soil. A full-grown pine can stand almost any degree of cold, but a young tree cannot do"so. It might sprout during summer, but a snowless winter would infallibly kill it. If, therefore, snow ceased, the enormous timber supplies of Northern Europe, Asia, and America would disappear.