Account of a Shower of Stones, 273 



the aistance of a quarter of a league, was heard with the 

 same force, and' attended with the same circumstances, by 

 a number of individuals in varioiis places •; but more parti- 

 cularly in the country, at the distance, at least, of seven or 

 eight leagues from Apt, the principal town of the fourth 

 district of the department of Vaucluse. This noise, how- 

 ever, could be the effect only of an unusual explosion; be- 

 cause it is certain that througliout the whole extent above 

 mentioned, and at that hour, no cannon was fired, nor was 

 there any explosion of gunpowder. It produced, by the 

 repetition of the sound in some of the mountains, the same 

 effect as the explosion of a cannon which differs in this 

 respect from claps of thunder. This circunistance, which 

 at first surprised' all who were witnesses of it, was accom- 

 panied with a phsenomenon still more extraordinary. On 

 the same day, and at the same hour, citizen Joseph Jully, a 

 farmer in the district of Apt, and his wife, being about five 

 hundred paces from the country-house of citizen Bartholo- 

 mew de Vaux, situated north of the town of Apt, at the di- 

 stance of about a quarter of a league, in the limits of Sau- 

 rctte, having heard the noise above mentioned, immediately 

 afterwards heard^ for the space of six or seven minutes, a 

 whistling which increased in sound as it approached, and 

 announced the fall of some solid body. Being terrified, 

 and ca;sting their eyes upward, the wife of Jully perceived 

 a black substance, whose fall on the ground both she and 

 her husband heard distinctly; after which the whistling 

 ceased. The wife of Jully states that this black substance 

 must have fallen in the vineyard of citizen de Vaux. The 

 wife of the latter, being then in the fields, at the same mo- 

 . nient heard the same noise and subsequent whistling, but 

 being alarmed she ran into the house, and neither saw nor 

 heard the fall of the above substance. Her Son, being theii 

 at work three or four hundred paceis from the house, also 

 heard the noise, the whistling, andahe sound of the fall 

 of a body, which, however, he did not see. At the sanle 

 instant, Marguerite Hugues, widowj and Marie Jean, wife 

 of Jacques Julicn, being on the road froiii Villars to Apt, 

 hi:3rd the same noise, the whistling and the fall of some 

 substance in De Vaux's vlnevard, which adjoins the said 

 road. After the sound of the fall, the whistling ceased. It 

 appeared to them that the above substance did not fall at 

 more thai» thirty paces' distance from them. 



" As soon as the report was spread that soiiie considera- 

 ble large Substance had fallen in the above vineyard, a great 

 uaueriiess was manifested lo search for it. The attempt was 

 Vol. XVII. No. 07. S *t 



