_A._ If that be the cause, I need not ask how a bottle of water is made to freeze in warm weather with snow, or ice mingled with salt. For when the bottle is in the midst of it, the wind that goeth out both of the salt and of the ice as they dissolve, must needs shave the superficies of the bottle, and the bottle work accordingly on the water without it, and so give it first a thin skin, and at last thicken it into a solid piece of ice. But how comes it to pass that water does not use to freeze in a deep pit? _B._ A deep pit is a very thick bottle, and such as the air cannot come at but only at the top, or where the earth is very loose and spungy. _A._ Why will not wine freeze as well as water? _B._ So it will when the frost is great enough. But the internal motion of the parts of wine and other heating liquors is in greater circles and stronger than the motion of the parts of water; and therefore less easily to be frozen, especially quite through, because those parts that have the strongest motion retire to the centre of the vessel. ========== CHAPTER VI. PROBLEMS OF RAIN, WIND, AND OTHER WEATHER. _A._ What is the original cause of rain? And how is it generated? _B._ The motion of the air (such as I have described to you already) tending to the disunion of the parts of the air, must needs cause a continual endeavour (there being no possibility of vacuum) of whatsoever fluid parts there are upon the face of the earth and sea, to supply the place which would else be empty. This makes the water, and also very small and loose parts of the earth and sea to rise, and mingle themselves with the air, and to become mist and clouds. Of which the greatest quantity arise there, where there is most water, namely, from the large parts of the ocean; which are the South Sea, the Indian Sea, and the sea that divided Europe and Africa from America; over which the sun for the greatest part of the year is perpendicular, and consequently raiseth a greater quantity of water; which afterwards gathered into clouds, falls down in rain. _A._ If the sun can thus draw up the water, though but in small drops, why can it not as easily hold it up? _B._ It is likely it would also hold them up, if they did not grow greater by meeting together, nor were carried away by the air towards the poles. _A._ What makes them gather together? _B._ It is not improbable that they are carried against hills, and there stopt till more overtake them. And when they are carried towards the North or South where the force of the sun is more oblique and thereby weaker, they descend gently by their own weight. And because they tend all to the centre of the earth, they must needs be united in their way for want of room, and so grow bigger. And then it rains. _A._ What is the reason it rains so seldom, but snows so often upon very high mountains?