110 



Mrs. Stephen P. Webb, now residing in Brookline, 

 distinctly remembers the great storm of 1815, during 

 which the famous Derby summer house on Castle hill 

 was blown over, and half of the Endicott pear tree in 

 Danvers was torn off. She tells me that many of the 

 trees in the neighborhood of Chestnut street, where she 

 then lived, were uprooted and otherwise injured. A 

 number of these trees were Lombardy poplars. Some 

 standing before the houses of Messrs. Philip Little and 

 Arthur W. West were wrecked at this time ; and so it 

 would appear that the elms now standing in the same 

 situations were planted after this storm, which must have 

 had a marked effect upon the older trees in our streets. 

 Mrs. Webb also recalls a row of Lombardy poplars on 

 either side of a walkway leading to the school building 

 which stood back of the estate now occupied by the res- 

 idence of Dr. O. B, Shreve. These facts show how ex- 

 tensively the Lombardy poplar was planted in Salem 

 during the early portion of the present century, and this 

 storm marks the date of the change from that tree to the 

 American elm as a general favorite for our streets. It 

 will be remembered that the change was made from pop- 

 lars to elms, on the Common, at this time. 



While examining the trees in the city, which has 

 been done with some care, several curious things have 

 been observed, of which some account is not out of place 

 here. 



In two or more instances, our common woodbine or 

 Virginia creeper (Ampelopsis quinquefolia) has taken 

 complete possession of trees, replacing their entire fo- 

 liage by its own. There is one such case in the yard of 

 Mr. Walter S. Dickson's house, at the corner of Mason 

 and North streets, where a pear tree appears to be the 



