Cosmographia Petri Apiani, per Gemmam Frisium ... iam demum ab omnibus vindicata mendis, ac nonnullis quoque locis aucta ...

A decorative initial letter V depicts a figure seated in a landscape.

Since the surface of the earth and water is one, and spherical (which its shadow, when it becomes a certain kind of opaque body, demonstrates most openly in a lunar eclipse), and established immovable in the middle of the world, it contains the five circles of the celestial sphere on its convexity, just as the sphere does: namely, the Equinoctial, the Tropics, and the Arctic circles.

Which, besides the Equinoctial, constitute five zones in the heavens and as many regions on earth. Of these, the two extreme ones around the poles, always shivering with cold, are scarcely habitable. The third, situated in the middle of all between the tropics, because of the continuous course of the Sun and because of the perpendicularity of the sun's rays, is distinguished by reason as a scorched land or region, and is badly or with difficulty habitable. The remaining two, which lie between the tropics and the arctic circles, are temperate and habitable. For they are tempered by the heat of the torrid zone and the cold of the extremes, of which we inhabit one, and the Antoeci and Antichtones the other.

The marginal note above corresponds to the text "others habitable, uninhabitable" which appears to be a catchword or marginal gloss in the original layout.

The aforementioned formula of the division extended on a plane.

A diagram shows the five zones of the Earth, labeled with cardinal directions (SOUTH, EAST, WEST, NORTH) and astronomical circles (Antarctic Circle, Tropic of Capricorn, Equinoctial/Equator, Summer Tropic/Tropic of Cancer, Arctic Circle). The diagram includes zodiacal symbols along the ecliptic line.