144 CHRISTY : THE MID-ESSEX WIND-RUSH AND WHIRL-WIND.
hundred yards to the right, lost a large branch. A little further
on, other trees, though apparently in the direct track of the
storm, were uninjured.
From this point, for a little over a mile, the storm again
traversed open fields, on which it has left little permanent trace
of its passage. An eye-witness has told me, however, that, at
one point, he saw it encounter a dung-clamp, which it lifted,
carrying it high into the air and there scattering it into fragments.
From another field, a little further on, a crop of mangold had
just been cleared, the leaves (known locally as "blades") being
left strewn over the ground, as usual. These also were lifted by
the thousand, whirled about the air, and carried upwards "out of
sight," as I was assured by an observer who watched the passage
of the storm at this point from about half-a-mile distant.
Continuing through or over Newlands Wood (in which little
damage was done), the storm damaged several trees and finally
struck some tall cottages near the Clay-pits (152ft.), in the parish
of Broomfield. The cottages were largely unroofed, while a large
elm was broken off short and thrown across the road.
Here the storm seems to have stopped, for I can hear nothing
of any damage done by it further on.
I have been asked in what direction the branches broken
off trees were carried. It is difficult to answer this with pre-
cision ; 'for the weather was so exceedingly bad for some time
after the storm that it was nearly a fortnight before I could go
over its route, which lay mainly across ploughed fields ; and, in
the interval, there had occurred the terrific southerly gale of 5th
November, which had overthrown many more trees and broken
off thousands more branches; so that it was often difficult to
distinguish the wreckage of the one storm from that of the other.
However, I feel able to state definitely that, in nearly all cases,
trees were laid down and branches carried in the direction in
which the storm went; but that, in some cases (as noticed above),
branches were thrown out to the left, and in other cases to the
right, of the track of the storm.
It was probably no more than a coincidence that the course
followed by this storm was almost identical with the centre of
that followed by the memorable hail-storm of 24th June 1897.6
6 See Essex Naturalist, x., pp., 112-129 (1898).