ON THE UNIVERSE.

The globe of the earth is divided in two ways: either according to the heavens into four equal parts, or according to its parts laid bare by water, and thus there is Asia, Chamesia Africa, Iapetia Europe, and Athlantis the Americas. There are many islands everywhere, but nowhere is a greater abundance seen than in the Moluccas, located toward the eastern part of Syria. Inner India, toward Calicut, has many. The same is true of the North, Athlantis, the Aegean Sea, and the Adriatic Gulf. Truly, according to the theory of the five parallels, the ancients divided the universe into five zones: two at the poles, uninhabitable due to cold, and the middle one due to heat. They claimed two were habitable and possessed completely opposite weather patterns. But the entire earth, wherever it may be, is habitable, and there is nothing that cannot be made tolerable by custom. Therefore, although there are six months of night under the poles, followed by as many of day, people still live there always. In the middle zone, the days are always equal to the night, which makes the heat tolerable. Furthermore, in that habitable region which lies beyond the tropic of the lesser days, the sea is almost entirely continuous, and no land emerges except at the ridges of Chamesia and Athlantis. There is still some land unknown under the pole of our antipodes, or the meridian, which, whatever it may be, we shall join to Athlantis itself—which is almost connected—at the strait of Martin Behaim, for it belongs to the new world. Another division of our habitable world is made according to seven climates. But in truth, for every location where the day is one hour longer than in another closer to the equinoctial line, a climate—that is, an inclination of the shadow—ought to be established. Whence, from 12 hours to 24, 12 climates must be posited, until clearly the day becomes 24 hours long, and from there up to six months, gradually increasing...