The name for the northern land mass, " Parias ", is derived from a passage in the " Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, " in which, after several stops, the expedition arrives at a region that was situated in the torrid zone directly under the parallel which describes the Tropic of Cancer.
22.
When this " Journal " was published, Darwin sent a copy to Humboldt, who responded " You told me in your kind letter that, when you were young, the manner in which I studied and depicted nature in the torrid zones contributed toward exciting in you the ardour and desire to travel in distant lands.
23.
In his " Meteorology " he divided the world into five climatic zones : two temperate areas separated by a torrid zone near the equator, and two cold inhospitable regions, " one near our upper or northern pole and the other near the . . . southern pole, " both impenetrable and girdled with ice ( " Meteorologica ", 362a31 35 ).
