_B._ I have shown already, that this compounded motion of the sun, in one part of its circumlation, drives the air one way, and in the other part, the contrary way; and that it cannot draw it back again, no more than he that sets a stone a flying can pull it back. The air therefore, which is contiguous to the water, being thus distracted, must either leave a vacuum, or else some part of the water must rise and fill the spaces continually forsaken by the air. But, that there is no vacuum, you have granted. Therefore the water riseth into the air, and maketh the clouds; and seeing they are very small and invisible parts of the water, they are, though naturally heavy, easily carried up and down with the wind, till, meeting with some mountain or other clouds, they be pressed together into greater drops, and fall by their weight. So also it is forced up in moist ground, and with it many small atoms of the earth, which are either twisted with the rising water into plants, or are carried up and down in the air incertainly. But the greatest quantity of water is forced up from the great South and Indian Seas, that lie under the tropic of capricorn. And this climate is that which makes the sun’s perigæum to be always on the winter-solstice. And that is the part of the terrestrial globe which Kepler says is kind to the sun; whereas the other part of the globe, which is almost all dry land, has an antipathy to the sun. And so you see where this magnetical virtue of the earth lies. For the globe of the earth having no natural appetite to any place, may be drawn by this motion of the sun a little nearer to it, together with the water which it raiseth. _A._ Can you guess what may be the cause of wind? _B._ I think it manifest that the unconstant winds proceed from the uncertain motion of the clouds ascending and descending, or meeting with one another. For the winds after they are generated in any place by the descent of a cloud, they drive other clouds this way and that way before them, the air seeking to free itself from being pent up in a strait. For when a cloud descendeth, it makes no wind sensible directly under itself. But the air between it and the earth is pressed and forced to move violently outward. For it is a certain experiment of mariners, that if the sea go high when they are becalmed, they say they shall have more wind than they would; and take in their sails all but what is necessary for steering. They know, it seems, that the sea is moved by the descent of clouds at some distance off: which presseth the water, and makes it come to them in great waves. For a horizontal wind does but curl the water. _A._ From whence come the rivers? _B._ From the rain, or from the falling of snow on the higher ground. But when it descendeth under ground, the place where it again ariseth is called the spring. _A._ How then can there be a spring upon the top of a hill?