THUNDER-STORMS. 139 



thunder. Thunder-storms are also most violent, or 

 rather one should say grandest, when the- clouds 

 are formed in an atmosphere which has for a 

 considerable time previously been dry as well as 

 warm. We see that in our own country. We have 

 often violent thunder-storms, with showers of very 

 short duration, and very local and limited in their 

 range ; we have also thunder-storms at the com- 

 mencement of broken and rainy weather ; but when 

 the rain fairly sets in, and extends over a large tract 

 of country, it lightens and thunders no more. la 

 tropical countries, where there are seasonal winds, 

 or monsoons, some dry from the land, and others 

 moist from the sea, the lightning and thunder at the 

 commencement of the rainy monsoon are often, and 

 indeed generally, absolutely terrific. When the 

 south-west monsoon sets in upon the west coast of 

 India, and is directed upward by the ridge of moun- 

 tains that skirts that shore, the strife between it and 

 the warm and dry air over the Balaghaut country 

 above the mountains, is terribly sublime. It lightens 

 as though the air were ten thousand furnaces ; all 

 the artillery in the world would be but as an infant's 

 cry to the thunder ; and the rain falls so fast, and 

 so consolidated, that the trees are broken or up- 

 rooted like dried stubble, and the rocks scattered 

 about as if they were pebbles. In some parts of 

 South America, where the plains are parched up by 

 the summer heat, and the snowy summits of the 

 Andes are at no very great distance, the thunder- 

 storms are said to be even more violent ; and in tropi- 

 cal, and even in southern Africa, their violence is 

 equal, if not greater. 



That thunder-storms occur during the night is 

 no argument against their formation by the action 

 of the light and heat of the sun ; and the close con- 

 nexion between them and heat and light is proved 

 by the fact that lightnings very generally accompany 

 the smoke of volcanoes, and are the more brilliant 

 the more* violently the fire rages in these. Inde- 



