Page:Omniana 2.djvu/246

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236
OMNIANA.

in former ages for enchantment, and which have so often been practised as miracles, have been explained by modern science. I have met with a phenomenon in acoustics which is not so easily explicable. It is said 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 those fortresses, in a straight line, and with the Pyrenees between. "But, (says the editor of the Journal de Hambourg,) though these mountains might be considered as an obstacle, the curious of that country conjecture that the sound of the cannon acquired a new force when it was confined between the openings of the mountains; and that the vallies through which the Rise runs were better adapted than the others to preserve this sound, which was not heard either at Foix or