nay, they that dwell in the same parallel line with these Negros, as about the Straights of Magellan, are white coloured, and yet some in Presbyter Johns country in Æthiopia are dun: they in Zeilan and Malabar parallel with them again black: Manamotapa in Africk, and St. Thomas Isle are extreme hot, both under the line, cole black their Inhabitants, whereas in Peru they are quite opposite in colour, very temperate, or rather cold, and yet both alike elevated.

Mosco in 53. degrees of latitude is extreme cold, as those Northern countries usually are, having one perpetuall hard frost all winter long: and in 52. deg. lat. sometimes hard frost and snow all summer, as in Buttons Bay, &c. or by fits; and yet England neere the same Latitude, and Ireland, very moist, warme, and more temperate in Winter than Spain, Italy, or France.

Is it the sea that causeth this difference, and the Aire that comes from it: Why then is Ister so cold neere the Euxine, Pontus, Bithinia, and all Thrace; frigidas regiones Magnus calls them, and yet their latitude is but 42. which should be hot: Quevira, or Nova Albion in America, bordering on the sea, was so cold in July, that our Englishmen could hardly endure it.

At Noremberga in 45. lat. all the sea is frozen Ice, and yet in a more Southern latitude than ours. New England, and the Iland of Cambrioll Colchos, which that noble Gentleman Mr Vaughan, or Orpheus Iunior, describes in his Golden Fleece, is in the same latitude with little Britaine in France, and yet their winter begins not till January, their Spring till May; which search he accounts worthy of an Astrologer:

is this from the Easterly winds, or melting of ice and snow dissolved within the circle Artick; or that the aire being thick, is longer before it be warm by the Sun beams, and once heated like an oven will keep it self from cold?

Our Climes breed lice, Hungary and Ireland malè audiunt in this kinde; come to the Azores, by a secret vertue of that aire they are instantly consumed, and all our European vermine almost, saith Ortelius. Egypt is watred with Nilus not far from the sea, and yet there it seldome or never rains: Rhodes, an Iland of the same nature, yeelds not a cloud, and yet our Ilands ever dropping and inclining to rain.

The Atlantick Ocean is still subject to storms, but in Del Zur, or Mari pacifico, seldome or never any. Is it from Topick stars, apertio portarum, in the Dodecotemories or constellations, the Moons mansions, such aspects of Planets, such winds, or dissolving ayre, or thick ayre, which causeth this and the like differences of heat and cold?

Bodin relates of a Portugal Embassadour, that coming from Lisbon to Dantzick in Spruce, found greater heat there than at any time at home. Don Garcia de Sylva, Legat to Philip 3. King of Spain, residing at Spahan in Persia 1619. in his letter to the Marques of Bedmar, makes mention of greater cold in Spahan, whose lat. is 31. gr. than ever he felt in Spain, or any part of Europe.

The torrid Zone was by our predecessors held to be inhabitable, but by our moderne travelers found to be most temperate, bedewed with frequent rains, and moistning showers, the Brise and cooling blasts in some parts, as Acosta describes, most pleasant and fertile. Arica in Chili is by report one of the sweetest places that ever the Sun shined on, Olympus terræ, an heaven on earth: how incomparably do some extoll Mexico in Nova Hispania, Peru, Brasile? &c. in some again hard, dry, sandy, barren, a very Desert, and still in the same latitude.

Many times we finde great diversity of aire in the same country, by reason of the site to seas, hills, or dales, want of water, nature of soil, and the like: as in Spain Arragon is aspera & sicca, harsh and evill inhabited: Estremadura is dry, sandy, barren most part, extreme hot by reason of his plains, Andaluzia another Paradise, Valence a most pleasant aire, and continually green; so is it about Granado, on the one side fertile plains, on the other, continuall snow to be seen all Summer long on the hill tops.

That their houses in the Alpes are three quarters of the yeer covered with snow, who knows not? That Tenariffa is so cold at the top, extreme hot at the bottome: Mons Atlas in Africk, Libanus in Palestina, with many such, tantos inter ardores fidos nivibus, Tacitus calls them, and Radzivilius epist. 2. fol. 27. yeelds it to be far hotter there than in any part of Italy: ’tis true: but they be highly elevated, near the middle Region, and therefore cold, ob paucam solarium radiorum refractionem, as Serrarius answers, com. in 3. cap. Josua quæst. 5. Abulensis quæst. 37.

In the heat of summer, in the Kings Palace in Escuriall the aire is most temperate, by reason of a cold blast which comes from the snowie mountains of Sierra de Cadarma hard by, when as in Toledo it is very hot; so in all other countries. The causes of these alterations are commonly by reason of their neereness (I say) to the middle Region: but this diversity of aire, in places equally site elevated and distant from the Pole, can hardly be satisfied with that diversity of Plants, Birds, Beasts, which is so familiar with us: with Indians, every where, the Sun is equally distant, the same verticall stars, the same irradiations of Planets, Aspects alike, the same neerness of seas, the same superficies, the same soyl, or not much different.

Under the Equator it self, amongst the Sierra’s, Andes, Lanes, as Herrera, Laet, and Acosta contend, there is tam mirabilis & inopinata varietas, such variety of weather, ut merito exerceat ingenia, that no Philosophy can yet finde out the true cause of it.

When I consider how temperate it is in one place, saith Acosta, within the Tropick of Capricorn, as about La-plate, and yet hard by at Potosi, in that same altitude, mountainous alike, extreme cold; extreme hot in Brasile, &c. Hic ego, saith Acosta, philosophiam Aristotelis meteorologicam vehementer irrisi, cùm, &c. when the Sun comes neerest to them, they have great tempests, storms, thunder and lightning, great store of rain, snow: and the foulest weather: when the Sun is verticall, their rivers over-flow, the morning fair and hot, noon day cold and moist: all which is opposite to us. How comes it to pass?

Scaliger poetices l. 3. c. 16. discourseth thus of this subject. How comes, or wherefore is this temeraria syderum dispositio, this rash placing of Stars, or as Epicurus will, fortuita, or accidentall? Why are some big, some little, why are they so confusedly, unequally site in the heavens, and set so much out of order?

In all other things Nature is equall, proportionable, and constant; there be justæ dimensiones, & prudens partium dispositio, as in the fabrick of man, his eyes, ears, nose, face, members are correspondent, cur non idem cælo opere omnium pulcherrimo? Why are the heavens so irregular, neque paribus molibus, neque paribus intervallis, whence is this difference?

Diversos (he concludes) efficere locorum Genios, to make diversity of countries, soils, maners, customs, characters and constitutions among us, ut quantum vicinia ad charitatem addat, sydera distrahant ad perniciem, and so by this means fluvio vel monte distincti sunt dissimiles, the same places almost shall be distinguished in manners. But this reason is weak and most unsufficient.

The fixed stars are removed since Ptolomies time 26. gr. from the first of Aries, and if the earth be immovable, as their site varies, so should countries vary, and divers alterations would follow. But this we perceive not; as in Tullies time with us in Britain, cælum visu fædum, & in quo facilè generantur nubes, &c. ’tis so still.

Wherefore Bodine Theat. nat. lib. 2. and some others, will have all these alterations and effects immediately to proceed from those Genii, Spirits, Angels, which rule and domineer in severall places; they cause storms, thunder, lightnings, earthquakes, ruins, tempests, great winds, floods, &c. the Philosophers of Coimbra, will refer this diversity to the influence of that Empirean Heaven: for some say the Exentricity of the Sun is come neerer to the earth than in Ptolomies time, the vertue therefore of all the vegetals is decayed, men grow less, &c.