Great Britain is essentially a rain country; but there are some parts of the world which have obtained the unhappy distinction of being _hail_ countries: such, for example, as some of the most beautiful provinces of France, which are frequently devastated by hail-storms. One of the most tremendous hail-storms on record is that which occurred in that country in July 1788. This fearful storm was ushered in by a dreadful and almost total darkness which suddenly overspread the whole country. In a single hour the whole face of nature was so entirely changed, that no person who had slept during the tempest could have believed himself in the same part of the world when he awoke. Instead of the smiling bloom of summer, and the rich prospects of a forward autumn, which were just before spread over the face of that fertile and beautiful country, it now presented the dreary aspect of an arctic winter. The soil was changed into a morass; the standing corn beaten into a quagmire; the vines were broken to pieces, and their branches bruised in the same manner; the fruit-trees of every kind were demolished, and the hail lay unmelted in heaps like rocks of solid ice. Even the robust forest trees were incapable of withstanding the fury of the tempest; and a large wood of chesnut trees, in particular, was so much damaged, that it presented, after the storm, little more than bare and naked trunks. The vines were so miserably hacked and battered, that four years were estimated as the shortest period in which they could become again in any degree productive. Of the sixty-six parishes included in the district of Pontoise, forty-three were entirely desolated; while, of the remaining twenty-three, some lost two-thirds, and others above half their harvest. This storm began in the south, and proceeded in two parallel bands from the south-west to the north-east; the extent of one of them being 175 leagues, and of the other 200; thus traversing nearly the whole length of that great kingdom, and even a portion of the Low countries. The mean breadth of the eastern portion was four leagues, and of the western two: and, what is very remarkable, the interval between the two bands, amounting to five leagues, was deluged with heavy rain. The largest of the hail-stones weighed half a pound each. The progress of this storm, which was from south to north, was at the rate of 16½ leagues an hour; and the velocity of the two bands was precisely the same. The continuance of the hail was limited to seven or eight minutes, at each of the principal stations marked.