6 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
Other ash branches were picked up beside the Hedingham
Road (a distance of about 350 yards from the Grovei, and some
are believed to have been carried further. An iron hurdle,
standing beside this ditch, was overthrown and a wooden post-
and-rail fence was broken down. Yet it is remarkable that
two large hay-stacks, just put up on the very bank of the ditch,
and not yet thatched, as well as a large heap of straw laid ready
for thatching, were entirely untouched, though they can hardly
have been as much as ten yards from the track of the storm.
Mr. E. T. Adams, F.R.A.S., of Halstead, informs me that
one of his carmen, who was on the road not far from this point
whilst the storm was passing, described it to him as "a terrific
rush of wind and smoke, carrying with it many small branches
or twigs torn from the trees in the Grove. He thought at the
time that it was a hay-stack on fire or an aeroplane coming down
on fire. It appeared to leave a bluish vapour or smoke in its
trail as it passed over the Hall Park in the direction of Heding-
ham."
After leaving the Grove, the storm reached the confines
of the park, and, crossing a meadow and a field of potatoes
(the ground here being approximately level), reached the road
to Hedingham. Here it broke the top off a damson tree, damaged
some currant bushes, and threw down an apple-tree, which
it laid to the north-east. Yet a cottage, in the garden of
which these trees stood, escaped injury (its thatched roof showing
not the slightest evidence of disturbance), though standing
within twenty-five feet of the apple tree mentioned.
Crossing the Hedingham Road, the storm (pursuing now
an almost easterly direction, and the ground here rising sharply)
traversed two fallow fields and a meadow, in which it has left
no trace of its passage. Its course here was more or less parallel
with, but converging upon, the road to Halstead, which it
reached in about a quarter of a mile, near Wells Farm. The
occupants, Messrs. J. and A. Fenner, inform me that, watching
the storm as it approached, it seemed to be coming directly
up, and actually in, the road, which is here below the level of
the fields on either side of it. It seems probable that they
are quite right; for I can see no trace of any damage done
in the fields here.
Reaching Weils Farm, the storm turned up a portion (esti-