, and is easily assimilated to
them. Besides, such rain gives those things which it waters a peculiar
temperature and difference of juice. Thus dew makes the grass sweeter to
the sheep, and the clouds from which a rainbow is reflected make those
trees on which they fall fragrant. And our priests, distinguishing it by
this, call the wood of those trees Iris-struck, fancying that Iris, or
the rainbow, hath rested on them. Now it is probable that when these
thunder and lightning showers with a great deal of warmth and spirit
descend forcibly into the caverns of the earth, these are rolled around,
and knobs and tumors are formed like those produced by heat and noxious
humors in our bodies, which we call wens or kernels. For a mushroom is
not like a plant, neither is it produced without rain; it hath no root
nor sprouts, it depends on nothing, but is a being by itself, having its
substance of the earth, a little changed and altered. If this discourse
seems frivolous, I assure you that such are most of the effects of
thunder and lightning which we see; and upon that account men think
them to be immediately directed by Heaven, and not depending on natural
causes.

Dorotheus the rhetorician, one of our company, said: You speak right,
sir, for not only the vulgar and illiterate, but even some of the
philosophers, have been of that opinion. I remember here in this town
lightning broke into a house and did a great many strange things. It let
the wine out of a vessel, though the earthen vessel remained whole; and
falling upon a man asleep, it neither hurt him nor blasted his clothes,
but melted certain pieces of silver that he had in his pocket, defaced
them quite, and made them run into a lump. Upon this he went to a
philosopher, a Pythagorean, that sojourned in the town, and asked
the reason; the philosopher directed him to some expiating rites, and
advised him to consider seriously with himself and go to prayers. And
I have been told, upon a sentinel at Rome, as he stood to guard the
temple, burned the latchet of his shoe, and did no other harm; and
several silver candlesticks lying in wooden boxes, the silver was melted
while the boxes lay untouched. These stories you may believe or not as
you please. But that which is most wonderful, and which everybody knows,
is this,--the bodies of those that are killed by thunderbolt never
putrefy. For many neither burn nor bury such bodies, but let them lie
above ground with a fence about