felt: hurricane damage 
69 
We have yet to see a community where all the shade trees were de¬ 
stroyed by the hurricane and even in sections where there was the great¬ 
est damage, the proportion of uprooted or badly damaged trees rarely 
overran twenty-five per cent and in most cases this was limited to parks, 
business centers or similar areas. The Main street elms of East Hamp¬ 
ton, L. I., were most unfortunate. One hundred and thirty-nine big 
trees were blown down and one hundred and eighty-seven remained 
standing, a loss of a little over forty per cent. This was practically a 
duplication of the local damage from the hurricane of 1815 except that 
in the earlier storm there were fewer buildings. Available records indi¬ 
cate that the 1815 storm covered practically the same area as that of 
last September. There was no damage then to wire lines because they 
were non-existent. There is a still earlier major storm, that of 1635. 
The sole record relates to conditions at Plymouth, Mass., and gives no 
indication of the area covered by the storm. 
We have been curious as to why there should be markedly greater 
damage to shade trees in community centers as compared with equiv¬ 
alent trees in the open country. Note at the outset that there are 
marked differences in storm effects on forest trees compared with shade 
trees and that this account is limited to shade trees. It is our convic¬ 
tion after traveling over a thousand miles in the storm swept area that 
a decidedly lower proportion of the larger shade trees along country 
highways or even on lawns of country residences were severely damaged 
by the storm compared with those in thickly settled localities. There 
were places here and there in the country where trees or groups of trees 
were uprooted or badly broken and yet the proportion was considerably 
less in our judgment than in cities and villages. It is our opinion that 
this is most reasonably explained in part by the generally better growing 
conditions for trees along country roadsides than in the thickly settled 
places. The country trees are usually more distant from the road and 
therefore have suffered less from the installation of the macadam or 
concrete roadbeds. They have escaped almost entirely the hazards to 
roots of ditching incident to the installation of water, sewer and gas 
pipes. It is also probable that the building in cities and villages de¬ 
flected the fiercer storm blasts in such a manner as to increase the 
damage to nearby trees. 
It may occur to some that such explanations have little bearing upon 
many park trees or trees growing under park-like conditions as, for in¬ 
stance, on the village green where they may be moderately distant at 
