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of the cover we have (in advance of) before the intense cold
of winter a light cellular bed, which
once covered by drift, six, eight or ten
feet deep enables the vital actions of the
plants to resist the slight elevation above
the freezing point which reaches it from above.

The frozen subsoil about 18 inches in the
Rensselare Summer does not reencroach upon the
plant when thus protected. In midwinter
in this high latitude of 78º.52 I have found
the surface so nearly moist as to be friable to the
touch; and upon the ice floes, commencing
with a surface temperature of -30º, I found
at 2 feet -8º at 4, +.2º and at 8 feet
+26º. This was the largest of a range of E. & West
hummock drifts in the open [unclear]Estuary[/unclear] off Cape Stafford.

My experiments prove as might be expected
that the conducting power of the snow is directly
proportional to its compression by winds rains
drift or compilation. The christaline structure
is another item of [moment?] for the early fall
spring & late fall and summer snows are more
cellular and less condensed than the nearly impal-
pable powder of winter. A beautiful influence
of this simple fact upon the interests of the subjacent
flower life is I has struck me again and again.
It is clear that the drifts thus in the course
of 4 months accumulating upon the plant and
generally upon inclined slopes exposed to the
sun must be in layers of different densities
1st the warm cellular snows of fall, next the
finely imparted products of winter and, above
these, the last warmer watery thawing snows of late
spring. These last soon influenced by solar heat send their
watery percolations to the denser stratas above [below?]
them and soon perfectly honeycombed by
heat crumble down upon this more resisting
bed - where the water watery surface like the
is spread over the surface of the firmer