XCIV. There may be opposed however, to this doctrine of humidity, the opinion of many, who affirm, that the humid and cloudy countries produce heavy dull spirits; and, on the contrary, that in the bright and clear countries, are born ingenious and sprightly ones. But be those few or many who say this, they say it without more foundation, than having imagined, the clouds of the horizon are translated to the sphere of the brain; as if in rainy countries, the opacity of the atmosphere was a dark shade, which obscured the soul, and that in countries which are blessed with a serene sky, the greater splendor of the day, would communicate greater clearness to the understanding. They might, with more aptness and propriety, say, that in the regions which are most bright and clear, the objects being more visible, they, through the windows of the eyes, enter in such numbers, that they distract the soul, and render it less fit for reflection and reasoning; and hence it is, that, in the obscurity of the night, we find the thread of our reason the least interrupted, and that we deduce our conclusions with more firmness than in clear day-light. XCV. Let those, who maintain humid regions to be ill-suited to the production of subtile men, cast their eyes on the Venetians and the Hollanders, who are some of the most able men in Europe: the first of these, stole part of their territories from the fish; and the last may be said to live in lakes and bogs. Even here in Spain, we have an example of this sort in the Asturians, who, notwithstanding they inhabit a province, the most beset with clouds, and the most subject to rain, of any in the whole peninsula, are generally reputed for subtile, ready, and expert people. But our wonder at this will lessen, if we consider the beavers, who live almost continually in the water, notwithstanding which, Nature has produced no brutes of so noble an instinct, nor who approach so near to men, both in their love for them, and in the imitation of their customs: for you may read in Conradus Gesnero, that they take particular care of their aged parents, and they have been seen to direct men in their navigation, and to assist them in fishing; and there has such an attention been observed in them to the dead, that they withdraw and conceal the carcasses of their defunct species, at the hazard of their being devoured by other aquatic beasts. XCVI. On the contrary, those birds, who the greatest part of their time, breathe the most subtile pure air, and the most divested of vapours, one while fleeting on the winds, and at other times placing themselves on the tops of mountains, ought to be more sagacious than terrestrial brutes; which is not the case.