it be so hot in Egypt, or there never rain?  Why should those [3070]etesian and northeastern winds blow continually and constantly so long together, in some places, at set times, one way still, in the dog-days only:  here perpetual drought, there dropping showers; here foggy mists, there a pleasant air; here [3071]terrible thunder and lightning at such set seasons, here frozen seas all the year, there open in the same latitude, to the rest no such thing, nay quite opposite is to be found?  Sometimes (as in [3072]Peru) on the one side of the mountains it is hot, on the other cold, here snow, there wind, with infinite such.  Fromundus in his Meteors will excuse or solve all this by the sun’s motion, but when there is such diversity to such as Perioeci or very near site, how can that position hold?

Who can give a reason of this diversity of meteors, that it should rain [3073]stones, frogs, mice, &c.  Rats, which they call lemmer in Norway, and are manifestly observed (as [3074]Munster writes) by the inhabitants, to descend and fall with some feculent showers, and like so many locusts, consume all that is green.  Leo Afer speaks as much of locusts, about Fez in Barbary there be infinite swarms in their fields upon a sudden:  so at Aries in France, 1553, the like happened by the same mischief, all their grass and fruits were devoured, magna incolarum admiratione et consternatione (as Valleriola obser. med. lib. 1. obser. 1. relates) coelum subito obumbrabant, &c. he concludes, [3075]it could not be from natural causes, they cannot imagine whence they come, but from heaven.  Are these and such creatures, corn, wood, stones, worms, wool, blood, &c. lifted up into the middle region by the sunbeams, as [3076]Baracellus the physician disputes, and thence let fall with showers, or there engendered? [3077]Cornelius Gemma is of that opinion, they are there conceived by celestial influences:  others suppose they are immediately from God, or prodigies raised by art and illusions of spirits, which are princes of the air; to whom Bodin. lib. 2.  Theat.  Nat. subscribes.  In fine, of meteors in general, Aristotle’s reasons are exploded by Bernardinus Telesius, by Paracelsus his principles confuted, and other causes assigned, sal, sulphur, mercury, in which his disciples are so expert, that they can alter elements, and separate at their pleasure, make perpetual motions, not as Cardan, Tasneir, Peregrinus, by some magnetical virtue, but by mixture of elements; imitate thunder, like Salmoneus, snow, hail, the sea’s ebbing and flowing, give life to creatures (as they say) without generation, and what not?  P. Nonius Saluciensis and Kepler take upon them to demonstrate that no meteors, clouds, fogs, [3078]vapours, arise higher than fifty or eighty miles, and all the rest to be purer air or element of fire:  which [3079]Cardan, [3080]Tycho, and [3081]John Pena manifestly confute by refractions, and many other arguments, there is no such element