speak more properly) the
earth intercepting the light of the moon.

CHAPTER XXX. OF THE PHASES OF THE MOON, OR THE LUNAR ASPECTS; OR HOW IT
COMES TO PASS THAT THE MOON APPEARS TO US TERRESTRIAL.

The Pythagoreans say, that the moon appears to us terraneous, by reason
it is inhabited as our earth is, and in it there are animals of a larger
size and plants of a rarer beauty than our globe affords; that the
animals in their virtue and energy are fifteen degrees superior to ours;
that they emit nothing excrementitious; and that the days are fifteen
times longer. Anaxagoras, that the reason of the inequality ariseth from
the commixture of things earthy and cold; and that fiery and caliginous
matter is jumbled together, whereby the moon is said to be a star of a
counterfeit aspect. The Stoics, that on account of the diversity of her
substance the composition of her body is subject to corruption.

CHAPTER XXXI. HOW FAR THE MOON IS REMOVED FROM THE SUN.

Empedocles declares, that the distance of the moon from the sun is
double her remoteness from the earth. The mathematicians, that her
distance from the sun is eighteen times her distance from the earth.
Eratosthenes, that the sun is remote from the earth seven hundred and
eighteen thousand furlongs.

CHAPTER XXXII. OF THE YEAR, AND HOW MANY CIRCULATIONS MAKE UP THE GREAT
YEAR OF EVERY PLANET.

The year of Saturn is completed when he has had his circulation in the
space of thirty solar years; of Jupiter in twelve; of Mars in two, of
the sun in twelve months; in so many Mercury and Venus, the spaces of
their circulation being equal; of the moon in thirty days, in which
time her course from her prime to her conjunction is finished. As to
the great year, some make it to consist of eight years solar, some
of nineteen, others of fifty-nine. Heraclitus, of eighteen thousand.
Diogenes, of three hundred and sixty-five such years as Heraclitus
assigns. Others there are who lengthen it to seven thousand seven
hundred and seventy-seven years.

BOOK III.

In my two precedent treatises having in due order taken a compendious
view and given an account of the celestial bodies, and of the moon which
stands between them and the terrestrial, I must now convert my pen to
discourse in this third book of Meteors, which are beings above the
earth and below the moon, and are extended to the site and situation of
the earth, which is supposed to be the centre of the sphere of