The element of water having remained shut in between the risen banks of the rivers and the shores of the sea, amid the swollen earth, the encircling air, having to wrap and enclose the enlarged machine of the earth, will find that its thickness, which lay between the water and the element of fire, remains much compressed and deprived of the needful water. The rivers will be left without their waters; the fertile earth will send forth no more its sprouting leaves; the fields will no longer be adorned with the bending corn; all the animals, finding no fresh grass to graze, will die; and food will fail the ravening lions and wolves and the other beasts that live by prey; and to men, after many defences, it will fall to abandon their life, and the human race will come to an end. And in this way the fertile and fruitful earth, abandoned, will remain arid and sterile; and through the moisture of the water shut up in its belly, and by its living nature, it will keep something of its growth for a while, until, the cold and thin air having passed, it will be forced to end with the element of fire. Then its surface will be left in scorched ash, and this will be the term of terrestrial nature.

Example of the thunderbolt among the clouds.

O powerful and once-living instrument of artful nature, your great strength availing you nothing, you had to abandon your tranquil life and obey the law that God and time gave to generative nature.

The branching and sturdy ridges with which, pursuing your prey, you furrowed the sea with your breast, opening the salt waves in a tempest.

O how many times were the frightened schools of dolphins and great tuna seen to flee from your pitiless fury! And you, with swift, branching fins and forked tail, hurling lightning, raised in the sea a sudden tempest with great crashing and the sinking of ships, and with great surging you filled the exposed shores with frightened and bewildered fish; and, being left by the withdrawn sea, they were stranded and became the excessive and abundant prey of the neighbouring peoples.

O time, swift consumer of created things, how many kings, how many peoples have you undone, and how many changes of state and various events have followed since the marvellous form of this fish died here.

Through the cavernous and twisted entrails, now undone by patient time, you lie in this closed place, and with your stripped, fleshless and naked bones you have made armour and support for the mountain set above you.