"_Climate_ or _Clime_ in geography is a part of the surface of the
earth, bounded by two circles parallel to the equator, and of such
a breadth as that the longest day in the parallel nearer the pole
exceeds the longest day in that next the equator by some certain
spaces, viz. half an hour.
"The ancients, who confined the climates to what they imagined the
habitable parts of the earth, only allowed of seven. The first
they made to pass through Meroe; the second, through Sienna; the
third, through Alexandria; the fourth, through Rhodes; the fifth,
through Rome; the sixth, through Pontus; and the seventh, through
the mouth the Borysthenes."--_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, art.
"CLIMATE."