12-i NOVUM ORGANUM 



Proximate Instances wanting the Nature of Heat 



The rays of the moon, stars, and comets, are not found 

 to be warm to the touch, nay, the severest cold has been 

 observed to take place at the full of the moon. Yet the 

 larger fixed stars are supposed to increase and render more 

 intense the heat of the sun, as he approaches them, when \ 

 the sun is in the sign of the Lion, for instance, and in the 

 dog-days. 14 



The rays of the sun in what is called the middle region 

 of the air give no heat, to account for which the commonly 

 assigned reason is satisfactory; namely, that that region is 

 neither sufficiently near to the body of the sun whence the 

 rays emanate, nor to the earth whence they are reflected. 

 And the fact is manifested by snow being perpetual on the 

 tops of mountains, unless extremely lofty. But it is ob 

 served, on the other hand, by some, that at the Peak of 

 Teneriffe, and also among the Andes of Peru, the tops of 

 the mountains are free from snow, which only lies in the 

 lower part as you ascend. Besides, the air on the summit 

 of these mountains is found to be by no means cold, but 

 only thin and sharp ; so much so, that in the Andes it pricks 

 and hurts the eyes from its extreme sharpness, and even ex 

 cites the orifice of the stomach and produces vomiting. The 

 ancients also observed, that the rarity of the air on the sum- 



14 This notion, which he repeats again, and particularizes in the 18th aph. 

 of this book, is borrowed from the ancients, and we need not say is as wise 

 as their other astronomical conjectures. The sun also approaches stars quite 

 as large in other quarters of the zodiac, when it looks down upon the earth 

 through the murky clouds of winter. &quot;When that luminary is in Leo, the heat 

 of the earth is certainly greater than at any other period, but this arises from 

 the accumulation of heat after the solstice, for the same reason that the maxi 

 mum heat of the day is at two o clock instead of noon. Ed. 



