6o BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 



are west, northwest or southwest. For days on end the white-capped Fort 

 Pond Bay, just off the village, and the thundering of the surf on the seashore 

 are ever present reminders of the force and steadiness of these westerly 

 and southwesterly breezes. In the winter they are apt to be northwesterly. 



Quite as much as these marine reminders of the wind is the peculiarly 

 effective response of the vegetation to it. Gnarled and often dead trees 

 (Fig. 2i), or trees and shrubs that are normally many feet tall but at 

 Montauk are prostrate or stand up only a few inches, are mute evidence of 

 this ceaseless power of the wind. Other rather striking reminders of this 

 are the individual response of certain herbs, such as prostrate habit, cushion- 

 like clumps, or one-sided growth, and the failure of certain shrubs and all 

 trees to grow on the tops of the Downs, and their practical confinement to 

 the bottoms of kettleholes or other protected places among some of the 

 taller Downs. 



Some quantitative expression of the effect of this wind on the vegetation 

 is so far unavailable, except the records of the rate of growth of the scarlet 

 oak on the windward and leeward sides of the Hither Woods, an account of 

 which will be found in the section, "Hither Woods" (Figs. i8 and 19). 



But. beyond the purely mechanical effect, which is everywhere obvious 

 at Montauk, practically nothing is known of the effect on transpiration and 

 other processes of plant activity of violent gales.* 



Once, in 1625, a great storm visited all the northeastern Atlantic coast 

 and reports, mostly apocryphal, tell of severe damage. But on September 

 23, 1815, a southeast gale of such intensity as to destroy "one half of the 

 forest trees and fruit trees," occurred and there are ample records of it.f 

 The Long Island Star, a weekly newspaper, quotes in its issue of October 4, 

 1815, a letter from a correspondent at Sag Harbor, dated September 24: 



* There are many references to the mechanical effects of wind on vegetation, particu- 

 larly of violent storms or hurricanes, notably: by C. T. Simpson, Plant World 6: 284-285. 

 1903; by G. H. Kroll, Bot. Centrl. Beih. 301; 122-140. 1913; by B. F. Hoyt, Amer. Nat 

 20: 1051-1052. 1886; by G. Eisen, Zoe 3: i-ii. 1892; by H. von Schrenk, Trans. St. 

 Louis. Acad. Sci. 8: 25-41. 1898; by J. Dufrenoy, Comp. Rend. 69: 174-175. 1917. 

 There is also an account of the effect of the wind on the trees along the Californian coast 

 in W. L. Jepson's "Silva of California," 2: 40-44. 1910. Some of these and many others 

 are summarized in Schimper's monumental "Plant Geography" (English version, Oxford, 

 1903.) More recently, Leonard Hill (Proc. Royal Soc. Ser. B 92: 28-31. 1921) has 

 written on "The Growth of Seedlings in Wind." 



t I am indebted to Mr. Jonathan Gardiner, now in his eightieth year, for first calling 

 my attention to this. Mr. Gardiner, who lives at Easthampton, lived for many years on 

 Gardiner's Island, and has heard several first hand accounts of this storm from people 

 who lived at the time. For the possible effects of salt laden winds destroying vegetation 

 during this storm see also an article by J. B. Beck, Am. Journ. Sci. 1: 388-397. 1819. 



