78 ON A WHIRLWIND AT BLOXWORTH. 



traced the path of the whirlwind, and most satisfactorily marked 

 both its beginning and ending (these are shewn on the map which 

 I have drawn to illustrate it). The whole length of the course is 

 exactly one mile, and its width varies from 60 to 80 yards. It is 

 as nearly as possible a straight course, and its edges are remarkably 

 well defined ; though heie and there a tree somewhat away from it 

 is destroyed, and there are at places a tree or trees, quite in the 

 track, untouched. The direction of the track is exactly S.W., no 

 doubt following the general direction of the gale of wind blowing 

 at the moment. It began (see map, letter A.) by uprooting a large 

 birch tree, breaking off and otherwise mauling a lot of oak trees, 

 but none of large size. Two elms and various oaks were thrown 

 down in its continuance, until it reached a wood of timber and 

 coppice (letter E.), where several oaks of considerable size were 

 uprooted and many others torn to pieces, leaving a very well 

 marked path through the wood ; thence the track lay through my 

 orchard (letter I).). Here, referring to the plan, you may see that, 

 crossing the orchard in a diagonal direction, the whirlwind laid low 

 just half of it, as well as broke off or tore to pieces several oak 

 trees in the hedge. The apple trees were all, excepting one or two, 

 cleanly and completely uprooted. Some of them were lifted and 

 dropped again at distances varying from two to twenty feet, look- 

 ing much as though plucked up like a cabbage plant and thrown 

 down a little way off. The trees, with earth and all adhering, 

 thus raised could scarcely weigh less than a ton and a-half or more 

 each ; they were not thrown down in one direction, but, like the 

 oaks, lay some in one, some in another. The force of the wind 

 thus appears not only to have come in a spiral form, but to have 

 had also a distinct upward stroke. The rest of the track lay 

 through grass fields, and the trees for the most part were in the 

 hedges. I have marked in the plan with red spots the sites of the 

 principal trees destroyed. At the bottom of the orchard a transverse 

 red line marks the position of a large limb broken off and blown from 

 an oak tree at about sixty yards' distance in the wood below it, and 

 shewn in one of the photographs exhibited. Adverting to the fcta 



