CHRISTY! THE MID-ESSEX WIND-RUSH AND WHIRL-WIND. 143 
that, just before the storm, the instrument stood at 28.90". 
When the storm began, he found that it had fallen to 27.92". 
This is the lowest point it is capable of recording : otherwise it 
would probably have fallen much lower. After this, he went 
out of doors to enquire what damage the storm had done. Re¬ 
turning within eight or ten minutes, he found the instrument 
then recording 28.95", having risen at least an inch (and probably 
more) in the interval. The temperature of the room was 61 °F. 
Mr. Waters is a skilled and reliable observer, engaged in high- 
class electrical work. Within half-an-hour or so after the storm 
had passed, he had cycled to a place about one mile distant, 
where people who had observed large black clouds whirling 
round rapidly over Writtle asked him what had been happening 
there. 
Miss Mabel Usborne, of Roper’s Hall (which suffered con¬ 
siderable damage : see p. 139), has an excellent barograph, and 
any record by it would have been of great interest ; but, un¬ 
fortunately, owing to alterations to the house being in progress,, 
the instrument had not been wound up for some time. Miss 
Usborne has been good enough to ascertain that no other baro¬ 
graph exists in Writtle. No observations on the force or the 
velocity of the wind during the storm were obtained by anyone, 
so far as I can learn. 
After leaving the village of Writtle, the storm traversed, for 
nearly a mile, a long, open, treeless held, where it left no trace 
of its progress. It then reached “ No .1 Bridge ” (96ft.), on the 
Chelmsford-Roxwell Road. Here the damage done was con¬ 
siderable, considering the lowness of the site. Some willow 
trees beside the brook were blown over. A hundred yards 
further, some roadside cottages were damaged, their chimney¬ 
pots being shifted and many slates blown off. A number of 
fragments of the latter still lie in the meadow opposite, no yards 
distant, as paced by myself. In the same meadow, a medium¬ 
sized oak was almost wholly wrecked (see PI. HI.), all its upper 
branches being twisted off and deposited a hundred yards or so 
to the right of the track of the storm. Several other trees close 
adjacent were broken almost as badly, their branches strewing 
the meadows thickly. Here, apparently, the storm was begin¬ 
ning to widen somewhat ; for a large oak, standing beside the 
road to Chignal on ground quite fifty feet higher and some two 
