NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. 287
In one place, about 100 yards from this spot, the destruction has been
tremendous. In a circle of nearly 40 yards diameter whole trunks, huge
limbs and branches, with immense masses of earth, lie on the ground in wild
confusion, mingled in such a manner that it is impossible to count the
number of trees destroyed. It appears as if a battery of heavy artillery had
been directed against a great mass of timber which had crowded that part of
the park.'' The narrator gives numerous details of havoc in various parts of
the grounds, which attest the extraordinary force and capricious character of
the storm, and remarked that the "blast has not taken a direct and lofty-
course, sweeping all before it; and we can form no other idea of it, than that
it moved with infinite velocity, undulating like the rushing of a mighty sea ;
sometimes passing over the spires of the gigantic oaks and elms, and then
Effects of Storm in Thorndon Park, October 12th, 1841.
striking the earth, rebounding and insinuating itself beneath some trees, and
levelling others by its force operating near the earth." .... "We
understand that (the storm) did some little injury at the distance of a mile to
the east of the park. It was also severely felt at Upminster, in the west,
before it commenced its ravages on Lord Petre's demesne. We have
endeavoured to compute the extent of mischief done in the park, but find it
impossible, from the confused state in which the shattered and fallen timber
at present lies ; but we believe there cannot be less than 300 trees torn up, or
so much shattered as to render it necessary that their remains should be
felled. As to the partially injured timber, it is too extensive to be enumerated.
This park, during the war, furnished some of the finest naval timber that
could be procured in the kingdom, and it still presents a large number of
equally valuable trees, . . . It is a little singular that the noise occasioned