," answered the engineer. "However, I
should be disposed to conjecture that this peculiarity results from the
situation of the island in the southern hemisphere, which, as you know,
my boy, is colder than the northern hemisphere."

"Yes," said Herbert, "and icebergs are met with in lower latitudes in
the south than in the north of the Pacific."

"That is true," remarked Pencroft, "and when I have been serving on
board whalers I have seen icebergs off Cape Horn."

"The severe cold experienced in Lincoln Island," said Gideon Spilett,
"may then perhaps be explained by the presence of floes or icebergs
comparatively near to Lincoln Island."

"Your opinion is very admissible indeed, my dear Spilett," answered
Cyrus Harding, "and it is evidently to the proximity of icebergs that we
owe our rigorous winters. I would draw your attention also to an
entirely physical cause, which renders the southern colder than the
northern hemisphere. In fact, since the sun is nearer to this
hemisphere during the summer, it is necessarily more distant during the
winter. This explains then the excess of temperature in the two
seasons, for, if we find the winters very cold in Lincoln Island, we
must not forget that the summers here, on the contrary, are very hot."

"But why, if you please, captain," asked Pencroft, knitting his brows,
"why should our hemisphere, as you say, be so badly divided? It isn't
just, that!"

"Friend Pencroft," answered the engineer, laughing, "whether just or
not, we must submit to it, and here lies the reason for this
peculiarity. The earth does not describe a circle round the sun, but an
ellipse, as it must by the laws of rational mechanics. Now, the earth
occupies one of the centres of the ellipse, and consequently, at the
time of its transfer, it is further from the sun, that is to say, at its
apogee, and at another time nearer, that is to say, at its perigee. Now
it happens that it is during the winter of the southern countries that
it is at its most distant point from the sun, and consequently, in a
situation for those regions to feel the greatest cold. Nothing can be
done to prevent that, and men, Pencroft, however learned they may be,
can never change anything of the cosmographical order established by God
Himself."

"And yet," added Pencroft, persisting, "the world is very learned. What
a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!"

"And what a much bigger book still with all tha