Having thus finished their discourse of the sun and moon, the Empress desired to know what stars there were besides? But they answered, that they could perceive in that world none other but blazing-stars, and from thence it had the name that it was called the Blazing-World; and these blazing-stars, said they, were such solid, firm and shining bodies as the sun and moon, not of a globular, but of several sorts of figures: some had tails; and some, other kinds of shapes.
After this, the Empress asked them, what kind of substance or creature the air was? The Bird-men answered, that they could have no other perception of the air, but by their own respiration: For, said they, some bodies are only subject to touch, others only to sight, and others only to smell; but some are subject to none of our exterior senses: For nature is so full of variety, that our weak senses cannot perceive all the various sorts of her creatures; neither is there any one object perceptible by all our senses, no more than several objects are by one sense. I believe you, replied the Empress; but if you can give no account of the air, said she, you will hardly be able to inform me how wind is made; for they say, that wind is nothing but motion of the air. The Bird-men answered, that they observed wind to be more dense than air, and therefore subject to the sense of touch; but what properly wind was, and the manner how it was made, they could not exactly tell; some said, it was caused by the clouds falling on each other; and others, that it was produced of a hot and dry exhalation: which ascending, was driven down again by the coldness of the air that is in the middle region, and by reason of its lightness, could not go directly to the bottom, but was carried by the air up and down: Some would have it a flowing water of the air; and others again, a flowing air moved by the blaze of the stars.
But the Empress, seeing they could not agree concerning the cause of wind, asked, whether they could tell how snow was made? To which they answered, that according to their observation, snow was made by a commixture of water, and some certain extract of the element of fire that is under the moon; a small portion of which extract, being mixed with water, and beaten by air or wind, made a white froth called snow; which being after some while dissolved by the heat of the same spirit, turned to water again. This observation amazed the Empress very much; for she had hitherto believed, that snow was made by cold motions, and not by such an agitation or beating of a fiery extract upon water: Nor could she be persuaded to believe it until the Fish- or Mear-men had delivered their observation upon the making of ice, which, they said, was not produced, as some had hitherto conceived, by the motion of the air, raking the superficies of the earth, but by some strong saline vapour arising out of the seas, which condensed water into ice; and the more quantity there was of that vapour, the greater were the mountains of precipices of ice; but the reason that it did not so much freeze in the torrid zone, or under the ecliptic, as near or under the poles, was, that this vapour in those places being drawn up by the sunbeams into the middle region of the air, was only condensed into water, and fell down in showers of rain; when as, under the poles, the heat of the sun being not so vehement, the same vapour had no force or power to rise so high, and therefore caused so much ice, by ascending and acting only upon the surface of water.
This relation confirmed partly the observation of the Bird-men concerning the cause of snow; but since they had made mention that that same extract, which by its commixture with water made snow, proceeded from the element of fire, that is under the moon: The Empress asked them, of what nature that elementary fire was; whether it was like ordinary fire here upon earth, or such a fire as is within the bowels of the earth, and as the famous mountains Vesuvius and Etna do burn withal; or whether it was such a sort of fire, as is found in flints, etc. They answered, that the elementary fire, which is underneath the sun, was not so solid as any of those mentioned fires; because it had no solid fuel to feed on; but yet it was much like the flame of ordinary fire, only somewhat more thin and fluid; for flame, said they, is nothing else but the airy part of a fired body.
Lastly, the Empress asked the Bird-men of the nature of thunder and lightning? and whether it was not caused by roves of ice falling upon each other? To which they answered, that it was not made that way, but by an encounter of cold and heat; so that an exhalation being kindled in the clouds, did dash forth lightning, and that there were so many rentings of clouds as there were sounds and cracking noises: But this opinion was contradicted by others, who affirmed that thunder was a sudden and monstrous blaze, stirred up in the air, and did not always require a cloud; but the Empress not knowing what they meant by blaze (for even they themselves were not able to explain the sense of this word) liked the former better; and, to avoid hereafter tedious disputes, and have the truth of the phenomenas of celestial bodies more exactly known, commanded the Bear-men, which were her experimental philosophers, to observe them through such instruments as are called telescopes, which
