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XXXV. Memoir upon a Process employed in the ci-devant 
Maconnais of France, to avert Showers of Hail, and to 
dissipate Storms. By M.Lrscuevin, chief Commissary 
for Gunpowder and Saltpetre at Dijon*. 
I. is more than five-and-twenty years since the considera- 
tion of the mischief produced by storms accompanied with 
hail, induced several philosophers and friends, of huma- 
nity to ascertain the method of averting this destructive 
plague. The celebrated coadjutor of Buffon, M. Guenaut 
de Montbeillard, thinking that hail is only formed after vio- 
lent claps of thunder, suggested, in 1776, the establishment 
of a great multiplicity of conductors, which, by drawing off 
the electric fluid, would prevent the explosion of thunder- 
bolts, and the.consequent formation of hail. His memoir, 
in the form of a letter to M. Guyton Morveau, was read by 
the latter to the academy of Dijon, and will be found at 
length in the Journal de Physique, tom. xxi. p. 146. 
M. Montbeillard, in support of his opinion upon the causes 
of hail, brings forward the observations of the first-rate na- 
tural philosophers, and suggests the most scientific and ceco~- 
nomical method of executing his projects. 
This circumstance induced M. Guyton de Morveau, who 
never allows any opportunity to escape of being useful, to 
investigate the theory of the production of this meteor, He 
seconded the philanthrophic views of his fellow-countryman 
by developing this theory in an excellent memoir, published 
in the Journal de Physique for January 1777, p. 60, by the 
title of, ‘© Letter of M.de Morveau to M. de Montbeillard 
upon the influence of the electrical fluid in the formation of 
hail.” 
Some years afterwards, M. Buissart, of the academy of 
Arras, without knowing any thing of M. Montbeillard’s 
work, read a memoir to that society on the various advan- 
tages that.might be derived from a multiplicity of electrical 
conductors or thunder-rods. This memoir will also be 
found in the above journal, vol. xxi. p. 140. 
* From M, Millin’s Magazin Encyclopedique for 1806, tom. ii. p. 5. 
Although 
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