o
had slept during the tempest could have believed himself in the same part
of the world when he awoke. Instead of the smiling bloom of summer, and
the rich prospects of a forward autumn, which were just before spread
over the face of that fertile and beautiful country, it now presented the
dreary aspect of an arctic winter. The soil was changed into a morass;
the standing corn beaten into a quagmire; the vines were broken to
pieces, and their branches bruised in the same manner; the fruit-trees of
every kind were demolished, and the hail lay unmelted in heaps like rocks
of solid ice. Even the robust forest trees were incapable of
withstanding the fury of the tempest; and a large wood of chesnut trees,
in particular, was so much damaged, that it presented, after the storm,
little more than bare and naked trunks. The vines were so miserably
hacked and battered, that four years were estimated as the shortest
period in which they could become again in any degree productive. Of the
sixty-six parishes included in the district of Pontoise, forty-three were
entirely desolated; while, of the remaining twenty-three, some lost
two-thirds, and others above half their harvest.

This storm began in the south, and proceeded in two parallel bands from
the south-west to the north-east; the extent of one of them being 175
leagues, and of the other 200; thus traversing nearly the whole length of
that great kingdom, and even a portion of the Low countries. The mean
breadth of the eastern portion was four leagues, and of the western two:
and, what is very remarkable, the interval between the two bands,
amounting to five leagues, was deluged with heavy rain. The largest of
the hail-stones weighed half a pound each.

The progress of this storm, which was from south to north, was at the
rate of 16.5 leagues an hour; and the velocity of the two bands was
precisely the same. The continuance of the hail was limited to seven or
eight minutes, at each of the principal stations marked.

There are instances, however, on record, in which hail has produced even
more tremendous results than those above recorded. In some parts of
South America hail-stones are sometimes so large and so hard, and fall
with such violence, that large animals are killed by them. Mr. Darwin,
encamping at the foot of the Sierra Tapalguen, says:--"One of the men had
already found thirteen deer lying dead, and I saw their fresh hides.
Another of the party, a few minu