BROMLEY: INSECTS AND STORM DAMAGE 
39 
ice and those who prefer to give this first aid themselves, will find that 
Federal and State departments of agriculture, experiment stations, for¬ 
esters and tree wardens will be only too glad to give helpful advice. 
The U. S. Department of Agriculture will send Farmers’ Bulletin No. 
1726. “Treatment and Care of Tree Wounds’’ to all who request it. 
THE RELATION OF INSECT WORK TO HURRICANE 
DAMAGE 
By S. W. Bromley, Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories , Stamford , Conn. 
Hurricanes are among the most destructive natural agencies affecting 
trees. In a few hours more trees may be destroyed than are cut down 
by man in several years. Insects over a period of 100 years probably 
kill many more trees than a hurricane. Insect damage, combined with 
that caused by a hurricane, one supplementing the other, produces 
conditions presenting far reaching and serious possibilities. 
While no portion of the Atlantic coast of the United States is exempt 
from these tropical storms, New England, since colonization, judging 
from the records, has been visited by only three major storms that 
could be classified as hurricanes, of which that of September 21st last 
was the most destructive to life and property. These storms occurred 
over a period of 303 years and were more than a century apart. The 
south Atlantic states are buffeted by tropical storms much more fre¬ 
quently and here the correlation of insect damage and storm destruc¬ 
tion has been more widely noted. Occurring a hundred years or more 
apart, hurricanes have allowed an extensive period of recovery to New 
England trees in the past. They have in fact been so infrequent, and 
the one prior to the last so long ago that insect conditions contingent 
upon the storm were not recorded or had dropped from memory. 
The violent wind of the September 1938 storm, varying greatly in its 
intensity but reaching maximum velocities of gusts of 90 miles per hour 
on the News Building in New York City, 163 miles per hour on Mt. 
Washington, and about 186 miles per hour on the Blue Hills Observa¬ 
tory, overthrew or badly damaged a million or more large shade trees 
in its path. Including woodland and other trees not properly classed as 
shade trees, probably 150,000,000 trees are down or badly injured as a 
result of the storm in southern New England, comprising Massachusetts, 
Rhode Island and Connecticut. This tremendous number of trees 
destroyed or damaged and probably as many more weakened is bound 
to have a far reaching effect on the insect population of those species 
