STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 81 



We agree with Mr. Hodges and are of the opinion that gales, 

 blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes and even cyclones are, or should 

 be, important educators, and are also an actual necessity in the 

 economy of nature. 



"We quote the following from the address made by President 

 Harris at our county horticultural meeting at Rochester last 

 month : "If twenty years since, or even ten, there had been planted 

 and cared for twenty acres of fast growing timber, such as cotton- 

 wood and willows, upon every quarter section of land up the Cas- 

 cade valley, and in addition, trees had been planted about the farm 

 buildings and along the roadsides, that terrible storm would have 

 passed almost harmlessly over the city." 



Now let us compare the tornado at Rochester with some others 

 that have occurred in the United States within the present cent- 

 ury. In 1860 there was a tornado made up on the Ohio river ; it 

 passed up the stream till it had nearly passed New Albany, 

 Indiana, and then struck into the heavy timber north and north- 

 east, and while it made terrible havoc with the timber, but few 

 houses were blown down and few, if any, lives lost. The extent 

 of the wrecked district was about the same as at Rochester. I was 

 in the wake of it within a few days after it occurred. The great 

 September gale of 1815, is still without a parallel in its extraordi- 

 nary characteristics of violence and destructiveness. The follow, 

 ing graphic description is quoted from The Great Events of the 

 Greatest Century: "The most calamitous destruction befell the 

 trees, orchards and forests exhibiting a scene of desolation, the 

 like of which has never before been witnessed in America." * 



* * " Far into the interior the tempest swept and raged with 

 unparalleled fury," * * * '' The wind suddenly shifting to the 

 southeast, blew a hurricane, the terrible devastation of which 

 covered a column or area of sixty miles in width." * * * 

 " Fresh water along the seaboard was for a long time, a rarety of 

 price, the wells having generally overflowed and left full of sea 

 water." * * * "When the vast and tremendous tide was 

 sweeping over the land, the spray arising from it was very great 

 over a wide surface of country, extending to the farthermost of the 

 northern states. It is spoken of as having resembled a driving 

 snow storm." 



Perhaps if we could form any just conception of the myriads of 

 insects injurious to vegetation, that this baptism of salt water de- 

 stroyed, we should get a glimpse at one of the benefits of this 

 unparalleled gale. 

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