THE SECOND PART

has more heat than the Air in the heights. If it were given to anyone to approach higher and closer to the sun, its heat, gradually increased, would be perceived as greatest near the sun itself. It is similarly compared with earthly heat, which is very faint around the surface but strengthens more and more towards the Center where it finds its seat and collection, so that the middle earth, between the sun whence the heat flows and the Center where it is all collected and reflected, is by right and merit the coldest.

A certain demonstration of this truth is ready for us: for when, on the hottest summer days, aqueous clouds are driven higher than usual into the air by the winds, they become, by the force of the most intense cold, pure ice, which falls in fragments—in the form impressed upon it by the air—to the great harm of vegetation. We call this Hail, of such great cold that we cannot endure to hold it in our hands for long. It not infrequently lies for several days in the heat of the sun before it is melted by the warm air and returns to water. If, therefore, there were not significant cold in the middle region of the air, whence would those clouds freeze? And who knows how great the cold is where the air is most cold in its middle? Undoubtedly so great that no living thing or movement of the eye could remain alive in it, but would immediately be transmuted into stone. Just as we have often noticed earthly exhalations carried high into the cold middle region of the air, there to be coagulated, compacted into very hard rocks, and to fall downwards. Not only stones, weighing several pounds, but also