And we thought it was all caused by global warming ...

To celebrate the secondhand book find of the week: an old edition of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy for £2.

from The Anatomy of Melancholy

Aerial Spirits or Devils are such as keep quarter most part in the air, cause many tempests, thunder, and lightnings, tear oaks, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts, make it rain stones, as in Livy's time, wool, frogs, &c. counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises, swords, &. as at Vienna, before the coming of the Turks, &. many times in Rome, as Scheretzius, Lavater, Julius Obsequens, an old Roman, in his book of prodigies, Machiavel hath illustrated by many examples, and Josephus, in his book The Judaic Wars, before the destruction of Jerusalem. ... They cause whirlwinds on a sudden, & tempestuous storms; which though our Meteorologists generally refer to natural causes, yet I am of Bodine's mind, they are more often caused by those aerial Devils, in their several quarters; for they show themselves in stormy weather, saith Rich. Argentine ... These can corrupt the air, and cause plagues, sickness, storms, shipwrecks, fires, inundations.

Robert Burton (1577–1640)

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