Process to avert Showers of Hail, ec. 2182 
- Although these various works had called the attention of 
the public administration and of the affluent landholders to» 
this important subject; and although, since the first. publi- 
cation of the ideas of Messrs. Montbeillard, Guyton de Mor- 
veau, and Buissart, innumerable disasters caused by hail in 
various parts of France had demonstrated the extreme utility, 
of the measures proposed, or of any other more efficacious 
or simple which might be suggested ; yet not a single land- 
owner, that we know of, has to this day put in practice any 
method to avert this plague. 
In an interesting memoir, presented to the Academy of 
Dijon, an 11, by M. Denize, member of the learned So- 
ciety of Magon, and containing inquiries upon the means 
of dispersing storms and preventing hail, we find a curious 
account of the custom, established in several places, of 
firing off powder-boxes on the approach of storms, in order 
to prevent the production of hail. This account, however, 
was not accompanied with any detail upon the process, 
nor even with the name of those places where it is prac- 
tised; and the schemes proposed by M. Denize appeared 
to the academy to be accompanied with too much difh- 
eulty in their execution: his memoir, in which al] the phe- 
nomena analogous to his subject are presented with much 
clearness, and explained according to the principles of sound 
philosophy, excited much interest, but did not meet with 
that degree of attention it seems to deserve, 
I learned accidentally, some time ago, that the process 
indicated by M. Denize is in use in most of the communes 
of the ci-devant Macgonnais, and that a part of, the mining 
powder which I send into this district of the department cf 
Saone and Loire, is employed for the purpose of dissipating 
_storms and preventing hail. The desire of ascertaining such 
an interesting fact induced me to profit by my connections 
with that department, in order to procure circumstantial de- 
tails upon this process, and its analogy with the principles 
established in the memoir of M. Denize; and the conclu- 
sions be draws induced me to revise his memoir, and to exa~ 
mine the various methods he suggests to check a hail storm 
in its birth, 
O 3 M. Denize, 
