18 EEV. C. W. HAETET — GALE OF OCTOBER, 1881, 



this morning, we have been almost entirely deprived of telegraphic 

 news, the communications being interrupted in all directions. 

 With the exception of some telegrams which appeared in our 

 second edition of yesterday, our Latest Intelligence is entirely 

 wanting, no news having been received from France, Germany, 

 Austria, or any other part of the Continent. Communications are 

 also interrupted with Scotland and Ireland. The break-down all 

 over England began at haK-past live yesterday morning, after the 

 publication of the morning papers ; and down to an early hour this 

 morning the wires were in most parts quite unusable, though 

 the Post-office authorities had managed after strenuous efforts to 

 establish a feeble and intermittent communication with Scotland 

 and Ireland by one wire apiece, and in each case by a circuitous 

 route. The telegraph poles have been blown down, and the wires 

 broken in every direction ; and, in fact, London is for all practical 

 purposes cut off from all but the southern portions of the kingdom. 

 So complete has been the break-down of communications that even 

 the Meteorological Office presents but a maimed and imperfect record 

 this morning of the weather which prevailed yesterday over these 

 islands ; and the observations it has received have not been suffi- 

 cient to enable it to make its usual detailed predictions of what the 

 weather in different districts will be to-day." 



Great damage was done to public buildings, houses, trees, and 

 corn-ricks in various parts of the country ; many and many a giant 

 of the forest succumbed to the force of the gale, so that it is 

 estimated that the parks of England alone have lost as many as 

 100,000 of their finest trees. This wholesale slaughter among the 

 trees may be partly accounted for by the fact that they were still 

 full of foliage when the storm fell upon them. The trees which 

 suff'ered most seem to have been the elms ; comparatively few oaks 

 have been actually uprooted, but in many cases huge limbs have 

 been literally twisted off. 



In our own county, to which I desire now to confine my remarks, 

 after a fall of from half to three-quarters of an inch of rain during 

 the night, the gale commenced to blow in earnest soon after 7 a.m., 

 reaching its height about 2 to 3 p.m., after which time it gradually 

 subsided; its general direction, to judge by the general lay of 

 the trees, was as nearly as possible from west to east. Unfor- 

 tunately as far as I am aware we had not a single anemometer at 

 work in the county, and the instrument at Stotfold, which is just 

 over the borders of the county, in Beds, was damaged, having lost 

 an arm. Perhaps the following facts give a rough idea of the 

 strength of the gale. At Hertford a slate weighing 6A^lbs. was 

 blown from the roof of the Green Coat School into a garden on the 

 opposite side, a distance of eighty feet. At Bishop's Stortford, in 

 the grounds of Mr. Pritchett, a young willow-tree 55 feet high was 

 snapped asunder 24 feet from the ground, and the upper portion 

 {i.e. 31 feet) was carried 51 feet to the east before it touched the 

 ground. At Eothamsted one large ash was seen to snap asunder 

 in the middle of the trunk, like a carrot, the top and branches 



