Effect of Cannon in dissipating 



the article Orage^ by M. de Jaucourt, I find the following 

 statements. " We have heard it more than once stated by 

 our military men that the noise of cannon dissipates storms, and 

 that it never hails in besieged towns. '" '"' * " This effect of 

 cannon is not altogether improbable ; at all events there would 

 be no harm in making a trial. A few hundred-weight of pow- 

 der and the expense of carriage of some pieces of artillery, which 

 would not be a whit the worse, would be all. Perhaps by this 

 kind of undulatory motion thus excited in the air by the explo- 

 sion of a number of cannon fired one after another, you might 

 shake, divide, and dissipate the clouds which were beginning to 

 ferment."" It evidently appears from the whole of this passage, 

 that in the year 1765 the use of cannons or of mortars (boites 

 afeu)^^ as means of dissipating thunder-storms, had not as yet 

 become prevalent, and that authors still recommended it under 

 the title of an important experiment. By the year 1769, an- 

 other step had been taken. For in fact, I find in the eighth 

 volume of the " Histoire de Fair, et des Meteores^'' that in May 

 1769, the county De Chamb in Bavaria suffered from violent 

 storms ; that the fields were thereby ravaged with the exception 

 of those " where the inhabitants had introduced the practice of 

 firing a number of small cannon and mortars, so soon as they 

 heard the thunder commencing."" 



It was the same year, 1769, that the Marquis des Chevriers, 

 a naval officer, who had retired to his property of Vaure- 

 nard (Mdconna,is) determined to meet the scourge of hail in 

 the manner he had seen thunder-clouds at sea dispersed, as he 

 supposed, viz. by the explosion of artillery ; and in this way he 

 annually consumed two or three hundred- weight of mining pow- 

 der. The Marquis of Chevriers died about the year 1790, but 

 the people in his neighbourhood, persuaded of the utility of the 

 method he had employed, continued it. I find in a memoir 

 -which was drawn up in the vicinity, by M. Leschevin, chief 

 commissary for powder and saltpetre, that in the year 1806, 

 cannon and mortars were in use in the following communes, viz. 

 Vaurenard, Iger, Aze, Romaneche, Julnat, Torrins, Pouilly^ 

 Fleury^ Saint Sorlin, Viviers^ Boiiteaux, Sfc. The commune 

 of Fleury employed a niortar whose charge was one pound of 



* A sort of cast'iroD mortar fired at rejoicings. Edit. 



