Others, we know, have invented other hypotheses, but all of them have been instantly refuted, as unable to explain the difficulties for which they were advanced, and as absolutely contrary to fact: and the inventors themselves have been obliged, almost as soon as they have proposed them, to acknowledge them deficient.
The only objection of any consequence, that has ever been made to the hypothesis of _climate_, is this, _that people under the same parallels are not exactly of the same colour_.

But this is no objection in fact: for it does not follow that those countries, which are at an equal distance from the equator, should have their climates the same.

Indeed nothing is more contrary to experience than this.
Climate depends upon a variety of accidents.

High mountains, in the neighbourhood of a place, make it cooler, by chilling the air that is carried over them by the winds.

Large spreading succulent plants, if among the productions of the soil, have the same effect: they afford agreeable cooling shades, and a moist atmosphere from their continual exhalations, by which the ardour of the sun is considerably abated.
While the soil, on the other hand, if of a sandy nature, retains the heat in an uncommon degree, and makes the summers considerably hotter than those which are found to exist in the same latitude, where the soil is different.