Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15447

    Great hail fallen in France

    Date
    1686
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p1
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 296mm
    width (page): 187mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > weather
    Description
    Drawings on a loose sheet accompanying an 'Account of Great Haile fallen in France' communicated by Robert Boyle to a meeting on 3 November 1686.

    The text describes how in the night from the 26th to the 27th, at around 11 pm, there was a terrible hail storm that lasted for about an hour. Both the size and the quantity of the hail was exceptional. The effects were devastating: the grapes in the wine fields were destroyed, the trees in the gardens were ravaged. In the morning the author went into the countryside and found more than 6,000 birds killed by the hail. Altogether, the author thought he had no other choice than to report on the matter.

    The text is copied into the Register Book (RBO/6/330) but the image was not copied.
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 3 November 1686, 'A French paper communicated by Mr. Boyle concerning an uncommon hail of a prodigious bigness and form, was read' (Birch 4:500).
    Related fellows
    Robert Boyle (1627 - 1691, British) , Natural philosopher
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > France
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