"On July 12, 1788, a hailstorm burst over a great part of central France from Rouen in Normandy as far south as Toulouse. The Scottish gardener Thomas Blaikie, who witnessed it, wrote of stones so monstrous that they killed hares and partridge and ripped branches from elm trees. For many more the rain of icy white pellets was deadly enough not to need exaggeration. It wiped out budding vines in Alsace, Burgundy and the Loire; laid waste to wheat ripening in the fields of the Orleanais; pitted young apples in the Calvados; shriveled young olives and oranges in the Midi. In the western province of the Beauce, the cereal crops had already survived one hailstorm on May 29 but succumbed to the second blow in July. In the Ile-de-France south of Paris, where vegetable and fruit crops were wiped out as they were ripening, farmers wrote, "countryside, erstwhile ravishing, has been...