xxxix DIFFERENT KINDS OF LIGHTNING 87 



Yet there is a distinction between them. Therefore 

 they are put in different classes. The one applies 

 suasion or dissuasion, the other is restricted to 

 warning how to avoid an impending danger ; as, for 3 

 example, fire, or deception from neighbours, or a 

 plot by slaves. Besides, I can perceive another 

 difference between the two kinds : if one has a 

 design, then the lightning that occurs counsels ; but 

 if one has no such design, it warns. Each situation 

 has its own peculiar features. In deliberation advice 

 is appropriate, but a warning comes unsought. 



XL 



ON the face of it, one's comment on this view i 

 would be that these are so many kinds of prognosti- 

 cations and not of lightning. Of the latter the 

 kinds are the boring, the splitting, and the scorching. 

 The first has a subtle flame, which from its un- 

 alloyed purity can win escape through the tiniest 

 aperture. The second, which scatters to the winds 

 what it strikes, is massed fire with an admixture of 

 condensed tempestuous wind. So the first kind 

 escapes again by the opening by which it entered. 

 The second spreads wide the effects of its violence, 

 it bursts what it strikes, and does not perforate it. 

 The third kind mentioned, the scorching, has much 2 

 earthiness in its composition, and contains fire 

 rather than flame. It therefore leaves deep scars 

 of fire, which will be branded in what it has struck. 

 No lightning, it is true, that comes to earth is 

 fireless, but this kind is distinctively called fiery, 

 because it imprints the marks of fire so manifestly, 

 by either scorching or staining. It scorches in three 



