THE SOUND OF CANNON.
[To ran EDITOR or rem "srsreaess."] SIR,—My keeper told me yesterday that during the last day or two he had distinctly heard the sound of cannon-firing. He is an old Marine Artillery man. and said that there was no mistaking the sound. The pheasants, he added, also heard it and showed uneasiness, which I had myself noticed without hearing the firing ; u I have been hardly out of my room—the pheasants I beard are in a small covert close to the house. The gardener also heard it; and to-day when walking between twelve and one o'clock I heard the unmistakable sound of heavy guns. During the last three days the atmospheric con- ditions have not varied—frosty, misty, very still, with just the soupcon of air from the south-south-east—the direction from West Norfolk (whence I am writing) of the fighting in Belgium. The atmospheric conditions were much the same as to-day on the day on which Queen Victoria's coffin was carried across the Solent, when, just about the same hour, being out of doors about six miles from Norwich, I distinctly heard the minute-guns fired during the crossing. This was heard in other parts of Norfolk, and I saw in the papers sub- sequently that it was also heard in other parts of England far distant from the Solent and from Norfolk—among them Herefordshire. The firing at the battle of Waterloo may, if this was from near Ostend, very well therefore have been heard on the South-East Coast, as I have read was stated at
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