Message #168411

[Bathos]

It is for the same reason that rain falls in summer and not in winter
in Arabia and Ethiopia too, and that in torrents and repeatedly on
the same day. For the concentration or recoil due to the extreme heat
of the country cools the clouds quickly.

So much for an account of the nature and causes of rain, dew, snow,
hoar-frost, and hail.

Part 13

Let us explain the nature of winds, and all windy vapours, also of
rivers and of the sea. But here, too, we must first discuss the difficulties
involved: for, as in other matters, so in this no theory has been
handed down to us that the most ordinary man could not have thought
of.

Some say that what is called air, when it is in motion and flows,
is wind, and that this same air when it condenses again becomes cloud
and water, implying that the nature of wind and water is the same.
So they define wind as a motion of the air. Hence some, wishing to
say a clever thing, assert that all the winds are one wind, because
the air that moves is in fact all of it one and the same; they maintain
that the winds appear to differ owing to the region from which the
air may happen to flow on each occasion, but really do not differ
at all. This is just like thinking that all rivers are one and the
same river, and the ordinary unscientific view is better than a scientific
theory like this. If all rivers flow from one source, and the same
is true in the case of the winds, there might be some truth in this
theory; but if it is no more true in the one case than in the other,
this ingenious idea is plainly false. What requires investigation
is this: the nature of wind and how it originates, its efficient cause
and whence they derive their source; whether one ought to think of
the wind as issuing from a sort of vessel and flowing until the vessel
is empty, as if let out of a wineskin, or, as painters represent the
winds, as drawing their source from themselves.