This relation confirmed the Empress in the opinion concerning the motion of the earth, and the fixedness of the sun, as the Bird-men had informed her; and then she asked the Worm-men, whether minerals and vegetables were generated by the same heat that is within the bowels of the earth? To which they could give her no positive answer; only this they affirmed, that heat and cold were not the primary producing causes of either vegetables or minerals, or other sorts of creatures, but only effects; and to prove this our assertion, said they, we have observed, that by change of some sorts of corporeal motions, that which is now hot, will become cold; and what is now cold, will grow hot; but the hottest place of all, we find to be the center of the earth: Neither do we observe, that the torrid zone does contain so much gold and silver as the temperate; nor is there great store of iron and lead wheresoever there is gold; for these metals are most found in colder climates towards either of the poles. This observation, the Empress commanded them to confer with her chemists, the Ape-men; to let them know that gold was not produced by a violent, but a temperate degree of heat. She asked further, whether gold could not be made by art?