6 
THE ESSEX NATURALIST. 
Other ash branches were picked up beside the Hedingham 
Road (a distance of about 350 yards irom the Grove), and some 
are believed to have been carried further. An iron hurdle, 
standing beside this ditch, was overthrown and a wooden post- 
arid-rail fence was broken down. Yet it is remarkable that 
two large hay-stacks, just put up on the very bank of the ditch, 
and not yet thatched, as well as a large heap of straw laid ready 
for thatching, were entirely untouched, though they can hardly 
have been as much as ten yards from the track of the storm. 
Mr. E. T. Adams, F.R.A.S., of Halstead, informs me that 
one of his carmen, who was on the road not far from this point 
whilst the storm was passing, described it to him as “ a terrific 
rush of wind and smoke, carrying with it many small branches 
or twigs torn from the trees in the Grove. He thought at the 
time that it was a hav-stack on fire or an aeroplane coming down 
on fire. It appeared to leave a bluish vapour or smoke in its 
trail as it passed over the Hall Park in the direction of Heding¬ 
ham. ” 
After leaving the Grove, the storm reached the confines 
of the park, and, crossing a meadow and a field of potatoes 
(the ground here being approximately level), reached the road 
to Hedingham. Here it broke the top off a damson tree, damaged 
some currant bushes, and threw down an apple-tree, which 
it laid to the north-east. Yet a cottage, in the garden of 
which these trees stood, escaped injury (its thatched roof showing 
not the slightest evidence of disturbance), though standing 
within twenty-five feet of the apple tree mentioned. 
Crossing the Hedingham Road, the storm (pursuing now 
an almost easterly direction, and the ground here rising sharply) 
traversed two fallow fields and a meadow, in which it has left 
no trace of its passage. Its course here was more or less parallel 
with, but converging upon, the road to Halstead, which it 
reached in about a quarter of a mile, near Wells Farm. The 
occupants, Messrs. J. and A. Fenner, inform me that, watching 
the storm as it approached, it seemed to be coming directly 
up, and actually in, the road, which is here below the level of 
the fields on either side of it. It seems probable that they 
are quite right; for I can see no trace of any damage done 
in the fields here. 
Reaching Wells Farm, the storm turned up a portion (esti- 
