The accompanying climate map shows all these features, the famous city Arym—occupying nearly half the space, although it is supposed to be merely on the equator—the seven climates, and the region beyond the seventh, near the north pole, marked as uninhabitable through the cold. The half-moon shape of Earth’s habitable quarter is obvious. The map betrays Arab influence in the orientation, the south being at the top; and Arym, or Aren, was an Arab myth, perhaps derived from the Mount Meru of the Hindus, which is said in the Vedas to be “in the middle of the earth.” According to Ristoro, the positions of the constellation figures do not only explain why one hemisphere of earth has land and the other none; they also explain the movements of the skies. For the figures of the zodiac face west (those that have faces), and this is why the diurnal movement of the whole heaven is towards the west, so that the constellations may move straightforward, in the natural way. On the other hand, the planets move in the opposite direction because it would not be seemly for them to pass each figure of the zodiac arriving first at the back and moving on to the head. This is the true reason of the contrary direction of the two principal celestial movements. Ristoro does not approve of the solution quoted by Brunetto Latini. He adds that the width of the zodiac was designed to contain the figures of the animals! After this, we are not surprised to hear that the red colour of the planet Mars is the cause of its martial nature (not the reason for which such a nature is attributed to it). The markings on the moon Ristoro explains by saying that some body must exist in the World which is neither polished and shining all over, like the stars, nor altogether rugged and dark, as the earth was supposed to be, but partaking of both natures; and this body must be the moon, because of her intermediate position between the earth and the nearest of the other planets (Mercury). [Illustration: CLIMATE MAP, OF ABOUT A.D. 1110. [_To face p. 248._ _Reproduced by permission from Beazley’s “Dawn of Modern Geography.”_]