76 ON PRUNING. 



alder and an oak, carrying away both across 

 the meadow in which they were growing. 

 From the latter, which had a "twin crown," 

 it blew one branch off it, measuring sixteen 

 feet in length and sixteen inches wide across 

 at the shattered end of it, into an orchard 

 which was a very considerable distance, and 

 which is only a few roods distant from the 

 ash-tree in question, tearing up several large 

 apple-trees in the orchard, and blowing over 

 a haystack which arrested its course, and car- 

 rying away the chimneys on the top of the 

 wheelwright's house adjoining, stripping off 

 the entire thatched roofs of the dwellings 

 situate near the church, tearing up a large 

 poplar which grew close in front of one of 

 them inhabited by a blacksmith and his 

 family, but which providentially, in its almost 

 instantaneous fall, only grazed the front of it, 

 breaking all the windows and carrying away 

 with it the wooden cornice of the roof; had 

 it fallen on the building, the inmates must 

 have perished ; taking in its course six very 



