10 
EASTERN SHADE TREE CONFERENCE 
will be taken care of. There will remain hundreds, no, thousands of 
trees still needing attention for their own health. 
Our elms must be pruned of broken and weakened branches as an item 
of Dutch Elm Disease Sanitation; this work must be completed by 
spring. We have Dutch Elm Disease very near New Haven now. 
We have a serious cause for worry in the loosened tree. Due to the 
location of New Haven with respect to the center of the hurricane (we 
had a 45 minute calm with 28.19 barometer) our trees were struck by 
gales 14 points apart (almost opposite in direction). These shocked 
and stricken trees constitute, perhaps, our only unknown factor in re¬ 
habilitation. 
I mentioned the barometer. That reminds me of a story, one that 
seemed to me one of the best hurricane yarns I have heard. Down on 
the shore east of New Haven there lived an old retired sea captain. 
He was very old, feeble, and deaf and spent his days sitting in an easy 
chair and dozing. Frequently he would, however, tap his barometer— 
it seemed to be about his only interest in life. He had quite a reputation 
as a weather prophet, and when going by we’d frequently step in and 
ask “Cap” what the glass said, and what the weather’d be tomorrow. 
Well, the afternoon of the hurricane things got pretty bad down by the 
shore. A huge elm came crashing down on the street out in front, and 
pretty soon the big maple in back came down on the wood shed, but 
old Cap Brown dozed on. Finally the tidal wave came in and salt 
water was lapping around the stoop. The folks began to think about 
evacuating grandpa, but his daughter looked in the front room and he 
was peaceful and ignorant of all trouble about him. 
In a minute though, the folks looking out the kitchen door were 
startled by grandpa’s banging his cane on the floor (as he did to call 
people) and his shouting for his daughter. “Mary, Mary, come here 
quick!” His daughter ran in and found the old man screwed around 
in his chair and pointing a shaking finger at his barometer. “See here, 
if that damned thing there were working right we’d be right in the center 
of a hurricane’ ’! 
As to the future, especially regarding replacements: for the last five 
depression years we have been unable to purchase any saplings for street 
planting. We have depended on the yield of our shade tree nursery. 
We have had an ample income of young trees for replacements, and for 
planting the newly opened streets that were waiting each spring. Now 
we shall require about 4000 trees, where normally we expected to take 
about 2000. We have 4000 sizeable saplings but not in all the species 
