that, according to accounts subsequently
received, a gunpowder explosion took place
at Hounslow on that same day and hour.
This is not the only thing of the kind which
the Southwold folk talk about. Messrs.
Curtis and Harvey's powder mills near
Hounslow were subjected to another explosion,
in March, 1859, the sound of which, we
are told, was distinctly heard at Southwold;
and the following details were given:
"Curious to say, the sound was reflected
upon the north side of the houses, owing to
the high ground about half a mile distant in
that direction. A cottage standing about a
mile to the south of Southwold, and of this
high ground, had its northern windows so
shaken that some of the panes of glass fell
out of the leaden frames." This result, if
really due to the assigned cause, is certainly
very remarkable. It was believed at
Hereford, a few years ago, that some of the
inhabitants heard the sound produced by the
explosion of a vessel laden with gunpowder
in the Mersey; they heard a strange
rumbling, and afterwards found that the
explosion had taken place at the precise time.
This must be a good round hundred miles.
Hereford also professes to have heard the
sound of the salutes at Portsmouth, on the
occasion of the grand naval review given
in honour of the Sultan in 1867; and this,
likewise, must be reckoned as a distance of
something like a hundred miles. This
corresponds very well with a like statement
that the review-guns were heard at Stanford
Park, in Worcestershire, about as far
distant from Portsmouth as Hereford is.

Some very curious discussions have taken
place concerning the sound of the guns
fired at the Battle of Waterloo. Sir Emerson
Tennent reports a conversation which
he had on this subject with the late Sir
Edmund Head. Sir Edmund, when a boy of
nine or ten years old, was going to church
on Sunday morning, June the 18th, 1815;
his father held him by the hand, and the
two were walking to Hythe church, in
Kent. To their surprise, they found the
congregation standing outside the church
door, although it was eleven o'clock, and
service was commencing within. They
were anxiously listening to the faint
reverberation of cannon, which came from the
east. It became afterwards known that
the clock of the church of Nivelles struck
eleven as the first gun was fired from the
French centre at Waterloo on that day;
and it was a fair inference that the sound
heard at Hythe proceeded from those guns,
although the distance can hardly be less
than a hundred and ten miles. It was
afterwards urged in objection, that, according
to one account, the battle did not begin
till half-past eleven; but to this there was
a rejoinder, that if the clock near the field
of Waterloo kept Brussels time, and that
at Hythe kept Greenwich time, or even
Hythe time, the difference of longitude
would go far to fill up this gap. Hythe
was not the only place in the south-east of
England where, it is believed, the noise of
the Waterloo guns was heard. On the afternoon
of that eventful Sunday, a gentleman
residing at Walmer was walking in
his garden, when his attention was arrested
by a delicate convulsive movement of the
sandy soil, as if it were being invisibly
shaken. He called the attention of his
old gardener to this circumstance, who
replied, "Then, sir, there's firing going on
t'other side; I have seen this afore when
there has been fighting." It is not
recorded that an actual sound was heard
on this occasion; but this kind of earth-
trembling is quite within the scope of
such phenomena. Some difficulty arises in
understanding these matters when it is
asserted that the sound of the same guns
was not heard by General Colville's force,
guarding the Mons road at a distance of
not more than a dozen miles from Waterloo.
Men of science, however, are conversant
with the fact, that different layers or strata
of atmosphere, hovering over a particular
spot, may, in hot weather, have different
degrees of density and moisture, affecting
unequally their power of conveying sonorous
vibrations to a distance. Nevertheless, the
facts ought to be stated honestly, whether
they seem to tell for or against any
particular theory. Not only in Kent, but
further north, was the same belief held.
Some of the inhabitants at Sizewell Gap,
near Aldborough, in Suffolk, heard sounds
at the very time of the battle, which seemed
to them to come from the German Ocean.

Many other distances, fully equal to
that between Waterloo and the south-east
coasts of England, are recorded as having
been traversed by sound. The bombardment
of Antwerp, in 1832, was heard on
the beach at Southwold, in Suffolk, a place
at which, as we have seen, several of these
examples have been noted. Southey, in his
Omniana, narrates that the firing at the
sieges of Rosas and Gerona, in the Succession
War, was heard distinctly at Rieux, in
Languedoc, a town built where the little
river Rise falls into the Garonne, forty-five
French leagues from the nearest of these
fortresses in a straight line, and with the
Pyrenees intervening. If these are French