14 JANUARY 1928, Page 13

Country Life

ELMS AND THE GALE.

Every other adult countryman has been comparing January, 1928, with March, 1916. While people in towns, especially in Town, hardly noticed the gale before the greater catastrophe of the flood, country people were watching their elms topple like ninepins. Within an hour or two round noon almost every road was blocked in some parishes of the Hbme Counties. Motors, bicycles, and the rest were to be seen making across country, and some few were imprisoned between fallen trees in front and behind. Half the village were out wooding," carrying off the top timber on barrows, perambu- lators, children's sledges and by hand. Rural district councils cleared the roads with praiseworthy celerity, but they some- times trebled the work that is left for the unhappy landlord. Their method was to saw through the narrower end and then with a steam " puller " swing the heavy part of the trunk Parallel with the road, and so clear a passage for traffic.