134 THUNDER STORMS. 



monsoon sets in upon the west coast of India, and 

 is. directed upward by the ridge of mountains 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 fur- 

 naces ; 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 dis- 

 tance, the thunder storms are said to be even 

 more violent ; and in tropical, 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 

 connexion 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. Independently of faint flashes of lightning 

 not being so well seen in moonlight as when there 

 is none, it is matter of common observation that 

 it lightens less on moonlight nights than at other 

 times, even admitting the general state of the 

 earth and the air to be the same. That is a far- 

 ther confirmation of the very intimate connexion 

 there is, not only between solar light and light- 

 ning, but between the red and heating rays of 

 light and that phenomenon ; and it is probable 

 that the moonbeams, consisting chiefly of the 

 middle and other end of the spectrum, take the 



