Africa, but they do not last long (ten minutes is enough to 

 destroy everything that stands). The distances are immense, 

 and the area of disturbance is usually a narrow strip ; hence, 

 except when one strikes a town, very few people ever witness 

 them. This summer hailstorms were more general and more 

 severe in the Transvaal than for some time past. A bad storm 

 baffles description. The size of the hailstones is only one of 

 the factors a strong wind enormously increases the destruc- 

 tiveness ; yet some idea may be gathered from the size of the 

 stones. The writer took a plaster cast of one picked up at 

 Zuurfontein (near Johannesburg), in November 1906, which 

 measured 4^ inches long, 33- wide and i inches thick a slab 

 of white ice. In the Hekpoort Valley (near Johannesburg) and 

 in Barberton, about the same date, the veld was like a glacier ; 

 the hail lay like snow, inches deep, and during the worst spells 

 the general run of the hailstones varied in size from pigeons' 

 eggs to hens' eggs ; but the big ones, the crash of whose 

 individual blows was distinctly heard through the general roar, 

 are described as ' bigger than cricket balls ' and ' the size of 

 breakfast cups,' generally with an elongation or tail like a 

 balloon. Sheep and buck were killed, and full-grown cattle 

 so battered that some were useless and others died of the 

 injuries ; wooden doors were broken in, the panels being 

 completely shattered ; corrugated iron roofs were perforated, 

 and in some cases the hailstones drove completely through them. 

 The writer photographed a portion of a roof in Barberton 

 which had suffered thus, and saw plaster casts formed by 

 pouring plaster of Paris into the indentations which two 

 hailstones had made in a flower bed in diameter equalling, 

 respectively, tennis and cricket balls. 



Near Harrismith, O.R.C., in 1903, two herd boys with a 

 troop of about a hundred goats and calves were caught by the 

 hail. The boys and all the stock, except one old goat, were 

 killed. 



