the 9th to the 13th.

Many fine and historic old trees were lost, and at Edgcumbe Park alone,
near Plymouth, it was estimated that at least two thousand were blown
down, and the damage was so extensive that it took two years to clear
the park; while at Cotehele, near the little town of Calstock, the
damage was beyond description. One hundred thousand feet of timber, it
was calculated, suffered in this one small district; and Cotehele
House, which before had lain behind a screen of trees, was afterwards
open to view from the town by this violent deforestation. Here is one
of the most interesting descriptions of the storm, written by Mr.
Coulter, the steward at Cotehele:

"The wind, having blown a gale the whole day, continued to increase in
violence as evening approached, and from seven till nine p.m.
accomplished, if not all, the greater part of the devastation to house
and woods. The noise of the storm resembled the frantic yells and
fiendish laughter of millions of maniacs, broken, at frequent
intervals, by what sounded like deafening and rapid volleys of heavy
artillery, and, as these died away, louder and louder again rose the
appalling screams of the storm, with slight intervals of lull and
perfect calm, only to return with tenfold violence, which made the
whole house tremble and vibrate. . . . Several of the windows facing
east were swept in as easily as a spider's web; lead and glass
scattered all over the rooms, leaving only the shattered frames,
through which rushed the resistless wind and blinding snow. . . .
Through the joints of doors and windows, the cracks and crevices,
before unknown to the eye, the drifting snow penetrated and piled up in
ridges, so that rooms and passages had to be cleared like the pavement
in the streets. . . . On an examination of Cotehele Woods, the scene
presented gives one the idea of an earthquake rather than that of a
storm. The majority of the trees are from two to three hundred years
old, torn up by the roots, and tearing up like so much turf yards of
macadamized road and huge blocks of strong stone walls."

The violent storm in the South of England in February, 1916, gives one
only a faint idea of this famous blizzard of 1891; for, great though
the damage was, it was more local, and the storm was of shorter
duration and did not interrupt the train and telegraph services over
many scores of miles, as the earlier storm did, travellers in the West
being out of touch with