are of this kind. This way unanimously go all the Peripatetics,
holding that these meteors, being formed by the clouds, do differ
according to their various configurations. Epigenes, that a comet arises
from a rising of spirit or wind, mixed with an earthy substance and set
on fire. Boethus, that it is a phantasy presented to us by fiery air.
Diogenes, that comets are stars. Anaxagoras, that those styled shooting
stars descend from the aether like sparks, and therefore are soon
extinguished. Metrodorus, that it is a forcible illapse of the sun upon
clouds which makes them to sparkle as fire. Xenophanes, that all such
fiery meteors are nothing else but the conglomeration of the enfired
clouds, and the flashing motions of them.

CHAPTER III. OF VIOLENT ERUPTION OF FIRE OUT OF THE CLOUDS. OF
LIGHTNING. OF THUNDER. OF HURRICANES. OF WHIRLWINDS. Anaximander affirms
that all these are produced by the wind after this manner: the wind
being enclosed by condensed clouds, on account of its minuteness and
lightness violently endeavors to make a passage; and in breaking
through the cloud gives noise; and the tearing the cloud, because of the
blackness of it, gives a resplendent flame. Metrodorus, that when the
wind falls upon a cloud whose densing firmly compacts it, by breaking
the cloud it causeth a great noise, and by striking and rending the
cloud it gives the flame; and in the swiftness of its motion, the sun
imparting heat to it, it throws out the bolt. The weak declining of the
thunderbolt ends in a violent tempest. Anaxagoras, that when heat and
cold meet and are mixed together (that is, ethereal parts with airy),
thereby a great noise of thunder is produced, and the color observed
against the blackness of the cloud occasions the flashing of fire; the
full and great splendor is lightning, the more enlarged and embodied
fire becomes a whirlwind, the cloudiness of it gives the hurricane. The
Stoics, that thunder is the clashing of clouds one upon another,
the flash of lightning is their fiery inflammation; their more
rapid splendor is the thunderbolt, the faint and weak the whirlwind.
Aristotle, that all these proceed from dry exhalations, which, if they
meet with moist vapors, forcing their passage, the breaking of them
gives the noise of thunder; they, being very dry, take fire and make
lightning; tempests and hurricanes arise from the plenitude of matter
which each draw to themselves, the hotter parts attracted make th