and bare, as nature bringeth vs foorth.

[Sidenote: Ethiopians blacke, with curled haire.] Others againe imagine the
middle Zone to be extreme hot, because the people of Africa, especially the
Ethiopians, are so cole blacke, and their haire like wooll curled short,
which blacknesse and curled haire they suppose to come onely by the
parching heat of the Sunne, which how it should be possible I cannot see:
for euen vnder the Equinoctiall in America, and in the East Indies; and in
the Ilands Moluccæ the people are not blacke, but tauney and white, with
long haire vncurled as wee haue, so that if the Ethiopians blacknesse came
by the heate of the Sunne, why should not those Americans and Indians also
be as blacke as they, seeing the Sunne is equally distant from them both,
they abiding in one Parallel: for the concaue and conuexe Superficies of
the Orb of the Sunne is concentrike, and equidistant to the earth; except
any man should imagine somewhat of Aux Solis, and Oppositum, which
indifferently may be applied aswel to the one place as to the other.
[Sidenote: The Sunne heateth not by his neerenesse, but onely by
reflection.] But the Sunne is thought to giue no otherwise heat, but by way
of Angle in reflection, and not by his neerenesse to the earth: for
throughout all Africa, yea in the middest of the middle Zone, and in all
other places vpon the tops of mountaines there lyeth continuall snow, which
is nearer to the Orbe of the sunne, then the people are in the valley, by
so much as the height of these moantaines amount vnto, and yet the Sunne
notwithstanding his neerenesse, can not the melt snow for want of
conuenient place of reflections. Also the middle region of the aire where
all the haile, frost, and snow is engendred, is neerer vnto the Sunne then
the earth is, and yet there continueth perpetuall cold, because there is
nothing that the Sunne beames may reflect against, whereby appeareth that
the neerenesse of the body of the Sunne worketh nothing.