SECT. VII. 
Rain and 
Clouds ne- 
cefiary. 
3 o NATURAL HISTORY 
{lowly communicated, and didributed by greater quantities into 
fome drata than into others. 
Here I cannot but obferve a great midake in Tome ingenious 
writers of Natural Hidory, who very undefervedly look upon rain, 
as a punifhment infii&ed upon mankind for the fins of the antedi- 
luvian world, imagining that there was no fuch thing before the 
flood, even nothing but ferene {kies, and plentiful dews. But it 
may be alked, Was there any fun, any ocean, rivers, herb, plant, 
or tree ? If there were, there muff have been rain, nay violent 
rain. Could dews fupply that moifiure which the fun exhaled ? 
"What would become of Egypt where there is little or no rain, 
if it were not for fomething more than dew ; if it were not lor the 
river Nile? and whence comes the increafe of their Nile, to which 
they owe the plenty of their grounds, but from the periodical Rains 
of Ethiopia? and what is the mifery of that otherwife fertile and 
delightful country, but their want of Rain ? Is not all vegetation at 
a ftand, even in an Englifh climate, after a long drought, notwith- 
ftanding the fummer dews are then mod: frequent ? Flow much 
greater dill is the heat and drought betwixt the tropics ? and how 
much more neceffary the Rain in fuch hot countries ? Dews are 
vapours exhaled by the Sun in its decline, and therefore rife but a 
little way into the Atmofphere, before the cold of the night arrefts, 
condenfes, and precipitates them : and what are thefe dews to all 
the vapours which the Sun in its drength mud raife ? What became 
of the day-vapours exhaled by the Sun ; what hindred them from 
coalefcing into drops, and thofe drops from falling, when they were 
become too heavy for the medium they fwam in ? and what hun- 
dred the Antediluvian feas and rivers from becoming dry but the 
returns of Rain ? In fhort, if the Antediluvian world was without 
Rain, it was without the chief balance for the heat of the Sun, 
and that kindly moidure which the winds were chiefly deflgned to 
waft from place to place, and didribute by drops in fuch gentle 
parcels as might relieve and rcfrefh both plants and animals ; nay, 
not only gentle but violent Rains are as neceffary to the orderly 
courfe of natural things as violent winds ; they both tend to prevent 
dagnations in the Atmofphere and the Ocean, to dilperfe poifonous 
exhalations, and to didribute moidure and air where there was none 
before, or at lead where there was much want. 
Another error which thele refined Naturalids were obliged to hold 
in confequence of the former, is, that the Antediluvian ikies were 
without clouds, by which equally groundlefs lancy they dripped the 
poor Atmofphere and reduced it to a naked blank, forgetting nature 
in her gayefl drefs, nor confidering that the riched dreams of light, 
and 
