Aristotle METEOROLOGY Complete

Translated by E. Webster.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

100 pages - You are on Page 46

The question is sometimes asked: why do the north winds which we call the Etesiae blow continuously after the summer solstice, when there are no corresponding south winds after the winter solstice? The facts are reasonable enough: for the so-called 'white south winds' do blow at the corresponding season, though they are not equally continuous and so escape observation and give rise to this inquiry. The reason for this is that the north wind I from the arctic regions which are full of water and snow. The sun thaws them and so the Etesiae blow: after rather than at the summer solstice. (For the greatest heat is developed not when the sun is nearest to the north, but when its heat has been felt for a considerable period and it has not yet receded far. The 'bird winds' blow in the same way after the winter solstice. They, too, are weak Etesiae, but they blow less and later than the Etesiae. They begin to blow only on the seventieth day because the sun is distant and therefore weaker. They do not blow so continuously because only things on the surface of the earth and offering little resistance evaporate then, the thoroughly frozen parts requiring greater heat to melt them. So they blow intermittently till the true Etesiae come on again at the summer solstice: for from that time onwards the wind tends to blow continuously.) But the south wind blows from the tropic of Cancer and not from the antarctic region.

There are two inhabitable sections of the earth: one near our upper, or nothern pole, the other near the other or southern pole; and their shape is like that of a tambourine. If you draw lines from the centre of the earth they cut out a drum-shaped figure. The lines form two cones; the base of the one is the tropic, of the other the ever visible circle, their vertex is at the centre of the earth. Two other cones towards the south pole give corresponding segments of the earth. These sections alone are habitable. Beyond the tropics no one can live: for there the shade would not fall to the north, whereas the earth is known to be uninhabitable before the sun is in the zenith or the shade is thrown to the south: and the regions below the Bear are uninhabitable because of the cold.

(The Crown, too, moves over this region: for it is in the zenith when it is on our meridian.)

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