It has been found that all the celestial signs have, by degrees, receded from the vernal equinox, and drawn back to the East: notwithstanding this, the point of the zodiac that cuts the equator is still called the first degree of the ram, though the first star of the ram be thirty degrees beyond it, and all the other signs in the same proportion.

Albategni, the Arabian astronomer, observes the autumnal equinox, September 19th.

The year has now advanced eighteen days beyond the equinox, and still there is very little remission of the cold.

Yet even Miss Wiggin could not keep the shadow of the vernal equinox off the simple heart of the junior Tutt.

We shall be a good deal longer on the way, and my captain advises me to be off, to anticipate the equinox.

Caesar doubled the number of hostages which he had before demanded; and ordered that they should be brought over to the continent, because, since the time of the equinox was near, he did not consider that, with his ships out of repair, the voyage ought to be deferred till winter.

The "Era of the Republic" was to be counted from the autumnal equinox, 1792.

This fish resorts here in vast numbers, and is in season after the autumnal equinox, and continues so till the ice begins to run.

When the wind blows high, and the fine snow drifts, as it does about the vernal equinox, in these latitudes, the Indians smilingly say, "Ah! now Pup-puk-e-wiss is gathering his harvest," or words to this effect.

According to Venerable Bede, the point was first accurately determined at a council held at Jerusalem about A.D. 200, when, after much profound discussion, it was finally decided that the world's birthday occurred on Sunday, April eighth,that is, at the vernal equinox and the full moon.

It was, by my account, the 30th of September, when, in the manner as above said, I first set foot upon this horrid island; when the sun being to us in its autumnal equinox, was almost just over my head: for I reckoned myself, by observation, to be in the latitude of 9 degrees 22 minutes north of the Line.

Finding my first seed did not grow, which I easily imagined was from the drought, I sought for a moister piece of ground to make another trial in; and I dug up a piece of ground near my new bower, and sowed the rest of my seed in February, a little before the vernal equinox.

I found now that the seasons of the year might generally be divided, not into summer and winter, as in Europe, but into the rainy seasons and the dry seasons, which were generally thus: From the middle of February to the middle of April, rainy; the sun being then on or near the equinox.

The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the 30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the anniversary of my landing on the island; having now been there two years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came there.

As for my face, the colour of it was really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not at all careful of it, and living within nine or ten degrees of the equinox.

One day during the spring equinox, as the chief of the sectaries of Ali, according to the custom of Persia, was sitting at the gate of his palace to hear the complaints of his people, a mechanic from the suburb of Julfa broke through the crowd; he prostrated himself at the feet of the Abbas, and prayed for justice; he accused the kazi of corruption, and of having condemned him wrongfully.

Equinox, Sunset Mountain, Owl's Head, Green Peak, together with the intervening hills, and the whole valleybecomes transfigured with ever-varying forms of light and shade.

She seemed pleased and said to me, "You had better, then, prepare two little boxes of portulacas and send them over to Mrs. M. to keep in her windows while she stays at the Equinox House."

Standing in the shadow of the hills which bound the valley on the east, the eye ranged southward to the long, undulating outline of the Green Mountain, coming round to the Equinox range on the west, "muffled thick" to its very crest with the green maples and pines, and still farther round to the bold hills and sloping uplands on the north.

'Twas now the month in which the world began, (If March beheld the first created man): And since the vernal equinox, the sun, In Aries twelve degrees, or more, had run; When, casting up his eyes against the light, Both month, and day, and hour he measured right; 450 And told more truly than the Ephemeris: For art may err, but nature cannot miss.

It is thought, I find here (whither I came to-day), that the great object is our Jamaica fleet; but that a detachment is gone to Ireland to do what mischief they can on the coast before our ally, the Equinox, will beseech them to retire.

The newspapers themselves in a peaceable autumn coin wonders from Ireland, or live on the accidents of the Equinox.

Nevertheless I have, in some moods, caught myself hankering after the old shelter, where the talk was unchartered always, and where no notices were suspended against smoking; and I know it used to be worth visiting on dirty evenings about the time of the Equinox, when the town-folk assembled to watch the high tide and the chances of its flooding the streets about the quay.

The conversation continued in that tongue through such pointless commercial gossip as this: "So the brig Equinox is aground at the head of the Passes," said M. Grandissime.

An equinox is a man who lives near the north pole.

There are numerous stories of this kind; and, according to Dr. Kuhn, one method for obtaining the fern-seed was, at the summer solstice, to shoot at the sun when it had attained its midday height.

" I started accordingly a few days before the winter solstice of the North, reaching the great road a few miles from the point at which it crosses another of the great gulfs running due north and south, at its narrowest point in latitude 3° S. At this point the inlet is no more than twenty miles wide, and its banks about a hundred feet in height.

But for a mere human gentlemanthat has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exercisesWe take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour, at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow.

An umbrella was quite a necessary appendage at times, to avoid its effects, which are often fatal to Europeans at the time of the summer solstice.

" Lampreys, Paulus Jovius, c. 34. de piscibus fluvial., highly magnifies, and saith, None speak against them, but inepti et scrupulosi, some scrupulous persons; but eels, c. 33, "he abhorreth in all places, at all times, all physicians detest them, especially about the solstice.

Such a one was Xerxes, that would whip the sea, fetter Neptune, stulta jactantia, and send a challenge to Mount Athos; and such are many sottish princes, brought into a fool's paradise by their parasites, 'tis a common humour, incident to all men, when they are in great places, or come to the solstice of honour, have done, or deserved well, to applaud and flatter themselves.

" Days and months passed on, as the lonely days of sorrow do come, and go, and come again; but as the lengthened shades of the summer solstice had again become less, another cloud had arisen in the firmament of mingled joys and sorrows, threatening to encompass even the bright rays of hope within its gloom.

for David and Louisa The Purkinje Shift All day, snow, now turning gray, trees darker in the fading light, violet peace before the night, slowly drifting toward the solstice.

[Footnote: The allusion here seems to be to the Summer or Winter Solstice.] therefore let not evil befall me either in this land or in this Hall of Ma[=a]ti, because I, even I, know the names of the gods who are therein.

" He then said to Dom Manuel, "Now Horvendile informs me that you were duly born in a cave at about the time of the winter solstice, of a virgin mother and of a father who was not human.

The chief times of devotion were at the summer solstice and the winter solstice, (whence the YULE clog), mid-day, or midnighta zenith being their period.

The chief times of devotion were at the summer solstice and the winter solstice, (whence the YULE clog), mid-day, or midnighta zenith being their period.

"In the matter of breeding, the period of service is from the vernal equinox to the solstice so that the foal may come at a suitable season, for they are supposed to be born on the tenth day of the twelfth month after the mare was stinted.

When they are lined at this season they pup about the solstice, for they go three months.

"The time to shear is between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice, when the sheep begin to sweat (it is the sweat which gives new clipped wool its name sucida).

Nothing is more prolific than the pigeon, for in forty days they conceive, lay, hatch and raise a brood, and they keep this up nearly all the year, stopping only from the winter solstice until spring.

"The best time for breeding geese is at the end of winter and for laying and hatching from the beginning of February or March until the summer solstice.

" [The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin may have replaced a pagan festival; the coincidence of the Midsummer festival with the summer solstice implies that the founders of the festival regulated their calendar by observation of the sun.]

The coincidence of the festival with the summer solstice can hardly be accidental.

Certain it is that the winter solstice, which the ancients erroneously assigned to the twenty-fifth of December, was celebrated in antiquity as the Birthday of the Sun, and that festal lights or fires were kindled on this joyful occasion.

In modern Christendom the ancient fire-festival of the winter solstice appears to survive, or to have survived down to recent years, in the old custom of the Yule log, clog, or block, as it was variously called in England.

"The Yule log plays a great part at the festival of the winter solstice in Perigord.

" [Persian festival of fire at the winter solstice.

The Persians used to celebrate a festival of fire called Sada or Saza at the winter solstice.

They have had them since the days when Christmas was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, when dried codfish was the staple winter food, and when rice was the rarest of imported delicacies.