"Equinox" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heard me say that Jerusalem is in the midst of the world. And that may men prove, and shew there by a spear, that is pight into the earth, upon the hour of midday, when it is equinox, that sheweth no shadow on no side. And that it should be in the midst of the world, David witnesseth it in the Psalter, where he saith, DEUS OPERATUS EST SALUTEM IN MEDIA TERRAE. Then, they, that part from those parts of the west for to go toward Jerusalem, as many journeys as ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... just as the vernal equinox had blown a few ships into harbor, a stranger was announced, and immediately recognized by the master of the house as a 'Don' something—a Spanish merchant, whose kindness to a young member of the family had been often mentioned in his letters from Mexico. One ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... shadow of the style will fall on the other divisions, each at its proper time. The divisions must be marked on both sides of the dial, because the sun will shine on opposite sides in the summer and in the winter months, changing at each equinox. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... feed for the horses, and, as it was still raining, they could not be very greatly in want of water. We fixed up our tent and retired for the night, the wind blowing furiously, as might reasonably be expected, for it was the eve of the vernal equinox, and this I supposed was our share of the equinoctial gales. We were compelled in the morning to remove the camp, as we had not a drop of water, and unless it descended in sheets the country could not hold it, being ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... I. The Eastern Church generally celebrated Easter on the day on which the Jews kept the Passover, while in the West it was observed then, as it is now, on the first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox. St. Victor directs the Eastern churches, for the sake of uniformity, to conform to the practice of the West, and his instructions are ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... and some apocryphal details, are added. Thus the Clementine writer calls John a 'Hemerobaptist,' i.e., member of a sect which practised daily baptism. He talks about a rumour which became current in the reign of Tiberius, about the 'vernal equinox,' that at the same time a King should arise in Judaea who should work miracles, making the blind to see, the lame to walk, healing every disease, including leprosy, and raising the dead; in the incident of ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... equinox, the season of Dante's journey, the sun in Aries is at the intersection of the ecliptic and the equator of the celestial sphere, and his apparent motion in his annual revolution cuts the apparent diurnal motion of the fixed stars, which is performed ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... strategic importance, all the other anchorages on the coast being mere open roadsteads. From this circumstance the trade-winds, or monsoons, in this region also had strategic bearing. From the autumnal to the spring equinox the wind blows regularly from the northeast, at times with much violence, throwing a heavy surf upon the beach and making landing difficult; but during the summer months the prevailing wind is southwest, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... the year and for a shorter cruise, I should be delighted to join you. But as I prefer dying a dry death, I must decline accompanying you all the way to the Scilly Islands in a little pleasure boat of thirteen tons, just at the time of the autumnal equinox. You may meet with a gale that will blow you out of the water. You are running a risk, in my opinion, of the most senseless kind—and, if I thought my advice had any weight with you, I should say most earnestly, be warned ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... a lie; something had gone wrong with the old party's eyes—amanuensis of the equinox, or something; he couldn't see well, but he was no more ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... he jeered. "That fat-headed old tub! He knows about as much about mining as a hog does about the precession of the equinox. No; miracles may happen but, short of that, he'll never get back ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... blast of October At the equinox, Stirred up in his hollow bed Broad ocean rocks; Plunge the ships on his bosom, Leaps and plunges the foam,— It's oh! for mothers' sons at sea, That they were safe ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... his nose, and the cake rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, and he ate it, and he went away, waving his tail, to the desolate and Exclusively Uninhabited Interior which abuts on the islands of Mazanderan, Socotra, and Promontories of the Larger Equinox. Then the Parsee came down from his palm-tree and put the stove on its legs and recited the following Sloka, which, as you have not heard, I ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... point in this system of chronological computation, based upon the ages of the patriarchs, was the great length of life to which those worthies attained. It was generally supposed that before the Flood "there was a perpetual equinox," and no vicissitudes in Nature. After that event the standard of life diminished one-half, and in the time of the Psalmist it had sunk to seventy years, at which it still remains. Austerities of climate were ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Himalaya, the climate retains the same character, and the same division of the seasons as in the plains of India; the summer solstice being every year marked by the same prevalence of rain which continues to fall without intermission until the autumnal equinox. But a new, a totally different climate begins at Kashmir, whose elevation I estimate to be 5350 feet, nearly equal to that of the cities of Mexico and Popayan" ('Correspond. de Jacquemont', t. ii., p. 58 et 74). The warm and humid air of the sea, as Leopold von Buch well observes, is carried ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... place only once a decade, on High Holy Day at dawn of the spring equinox. For days prior to it joyous throngs of workers helped assemble old vehicles, machine tools and computers in the public squares, crowning each pile with used, disconnected robots. In the evening of the Day they proudly made ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... singing wild songs. Finally they burned a straw-man on the field.[300] In the district of Duesseldorf the straw-man burned on Shrove Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn.[301] On the first Monday after the spring equinox the urchins of Zurich drag a straw-man on a little cart through the streets, while at the same time the girls carry about a May-tree. When vespers ring, the straw-man is burned.[302] In the district of Aachen on Ash Wednesday a man used to be encased ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... age cultivated fields, and the solitude he produces will be succeeded by a powerful and healthy population. The results of these events in the moral and political world may be compared to those produced in the vegetable kingdom by the storms and heavy gales so usual at the vernal equinox, the time of the formation of the seed; the pollen or farina of one flower is thrown upon the pistil of another, and the crossing of varieties of plants so essential to the perfection of the vegetable world produced. In man moral causes ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... Pliny says that after the autumnal equinox it appears every hour. This I have extracted from the Comments of Landino on the fourth book of the AEneid, and I mention it that no man may be deprived of the fruits of his labors, and that due honors may be rendered ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... astonishment (see also p. 85). As in the case of the Chaldeans and Babylonians, a motive for the study of the stars and planets was the priestly one of accurately fixing the religious festivals. The tropical year being thus ascertained, their tables showed the exact time of the equinox or sun's transit across the equatorial, and of the solstice. From a very early period they had practised agriculture, growing Indian corn and "Mexican aloe." Having no animals of draft, such as the horse, or ox, their farming was naturally of a rude ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... about to rush away over the mountains? At the autumnal equinox a wild boar wounded thee! Thou art dead, and the fountains weep and the trees droop, and the winter wind is whistling through ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... of the Early Paris variety, were set out about the last of June, usually four feet apart each way. They were given good care, and generally began to head in September, at the time of the autumnal equinox, when there is usually a week or two of cool, rainy weather. Following this, early in October, there are generally a few hard frosts which injure some of the heads if they are not kept well covered and closely cut. The main cauliflower season then comes ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... started, comes the sugar harvest. It is the sequel of the bitter frost; a sap-run is the sweet good-by of winter. It denotes a certain equipoise of the season; the heat of the day fully balances the frost of the night. In New York and New England, the time of the sap hovers about the vernal equinox, beginning a week or ten days before, and continuing a week or ten days after. As the days and nights get equal, the heat and cold get equal, and the sap mounts. A day that brings the bees out of the hive will bring the sap out of the maple-tree. It is ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... this century will not be counted as a leap year. It is fortunate that the difference is one of eleven days, for as that is the number which is added every year to the epact our epacts are almost the same. As to the celebration of Easter, that is a different question. Your equinox is on March the 21st, ours on the 10th, and the astronomers say we are both wrong; sometimes it is we who are wrong and sometimes you, as the equinox varies. You know you are not even in agreement with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... compliment to the brides, were celebrated after the Persian fashion, and during the vernal equinox. For at no other period, by the ancient laws of Persia, could nuptials be legally celebrated. Such an institution is redolent of the poetry and freshness of the new world, and of an attention to the voice of nature, and the analogies of physical life. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... Laudes Christo cantentur abunde." Historia, tom. i. p. 225. Now since Bartholomew Columbus was a fairly educated man, writing this note in England on a map made for the eyes of the king of England, I suppose he used the old English style which made the year begin at the vernal equinox instead of Christmas, so that his February, 1488, means the next month but one after December, 1488, i. e. what in our new style becomes February, 1489. Bartholomew returned to Lisbon from Africa ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... safe-guarded. For if a contract is skilfully drawn, each may obtain a release from the other without disadvantage. From astronomy we find the east, west, south, and north, as well as the theory of the heavens, the equinox, solstice, and courses of the stars. If one has no knowledge of these matters, he will not be able to have any comprehension of ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... grown very long; the sun had passed the vernal equinox, and yet it looked upon unbroken snowfields. Then, about the middle of April, the snow passed quickly away in blazing sunshine, in a thousand rivulets, in a flooded river. The roads were heavy with mud, but the earth was left green, the bud of spring having been nurtured beneath the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the string of a plumb-line. The sun was bisected by the line of the horizon, and appeared to be moving about them in a circle, with only its upper half visible. As Jupiter's northern hemisphere was passing through its autumnal equinox, they concluded they had landed ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... reader of nice observation might ascertain from the book in what latitude, season, or circumstances, it had been written. The opponents are powerful. Reynolds ridiculed the notion of thoughts shooting forth with greater vigour at the summer solstice or the equinox; Johnson called it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... Epithet epiteto. Epitome resumo. Epitomise mallongigi. Epoch epoko. Equable egala. Equal egala. Equality egaleco. Equalise egaligi. Equally egale. Equation ekvacio. Equator ekvatoro. Equilibrium ekvilibro. Equinox tagnoktegaleco. Equipment (milit.) armilaro. Equitable justa. Equity justeco. Equivalent ekvivalenta. Equivocal dusenca. Era tempokalkulo. Eradicate elradikigi. Erase surstreki. Eraser skrapileto. Erasure surstrekajxo. Ere antaux (ol). Erect starigi. Erect vertikala. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... transports, we had no hopes of getting out of the channel with so large a fleet, without the continuance of a fair wind for a considerable time, and this was what we had every day less and less reason to expect, as the time of the equinox drew near; wherefore our golden dreams and ideal possession of the Peruvian treasures grew every day more faint, and the difficulties and dangers of the passage round Cape Horn, in the winter season, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... same state we won't describe: we would Perhaps from hearsay, or from recollection: But getting nigh grim Dante's "obscure wood,"[539] That horrid equinox, that hateful section Of human years—that half-way house—that rude Hut, whence wise travellers drive with circumspection[jz] Life's sad post-horses o'er the dreary frontier Of Age, and looking back to Youth, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the king gave the peace of God and his full friendship to either side. Then the king and his peers decreed that a council of all the nobles should be held for the second time in London at the harvest equinox; and the king directed the army to be called out, as well south of the Thames as north, all that was in any way most eminent. Then declared they Sweyn the earl an outlaw, and summoned Godwin the earl and Harold the earl, to the council, as quickly as they could effect it. When they had come thither, ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... the ancient Astrologers consecrated the six divisions of the 12,000 year cycle, corresponding to the reproductive months of Spring and Summer, to him as Lord of Good, and symbolizing him by the constellation of the Zodiac in which the Vernal Equinox successively occurred, as explained hereafter, they dedicated the six divisions of that cycle, corresponding to the destructive months of Autumn and Winter, to him as Lord of Evil, and as such, symbolizing him by the serpent, marked the beginning ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... betokened among other things an utter absence of fear. A tract of country unaltered from that sinister condition which made Caesar anxious every year to get clear of its glooms before the autumnal equinox, a kind of landscape and weather which leads travellers from the South to describe our island as Homer's Cimmerian land, was not, on the face of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... birth of spring. The Adoniac or Syrian cults were similar, Adonis being killed, but revived to point to life through death. In the Cabirie Mysteries on the island of Samothrace, Atys the Sun was killed by his brothers the Seasons, and at the vernal equinox was restored to life. So, also, the Druids, as far north as England, taught of one God the tragedy of winter and summer, and conducted the initiate through the valley of death to ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... whose destiny is to become an apparently insignificant and a wholly unnoticed part of an enormous bank, assumes its shape of ethereal beauty as faithfully as though preparing for some grand exhibition. Planets rush with dizzy sweep through almost limitless courses, yet return to equinox or solstice at the appointed second, their very movement being "the uniform manifestation of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... aside the veil which he had hitherto used. An account was brought that the infant sovereign of Persia had died at Ispahan, and consequently that the throne was vacant. It has always been the usage of the kings of Persia to observe the Nuroze, or vernal equinox, as a great festival; and on it all the chief officers, civil and military, of the government appear at court. Nadir issued an order that not only these, but every person of rank and consideration in the kingdom, should meet him on the day of that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... province with the death of Attalus the Third.[539] The Ephesians indeed even antedated this event, and adopted an era which commenced with the September of the year 134,[540] the reason for this anticipation being the usual Asiatic custom of beginning the civil year with the autumnal equinox. The real point of departure of this new era of Ephesus was either the death of Attalus or the victory of the city over the fleet of Aristonicus. But, though the work of organisation could be entered on at once, its completion ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... by each. Their year accordingly was lunisolar, consisting of twelve lunar months, with an intercalation to make the whole agree with the annual course of the sun. The year was further distinguished as being either common or ecclesiastical. The former began at the autumnal equinox, the season at which they imagined the world was created; while the latter, by Divine appointment, commenced about six months earlier, the period when their fathers were delivered from the thraldom of Egypt. Their months always began with the new moon; and before ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... The gigantic Storm-wind of the equinox, Landward in his wrath he scourges The toiling surges, Laden with seaweed from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... not artificial. The doubling is chiefly observed at the vernal equinox, our month of May, and is perhaps due to spring floods, or vegetation in valleys of the like trend, as we find in Siberia. The massing of clouds or mists will account for the peculiar whiteness at the edge of the limb, and an occasional ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... the equinox, if I remember rightly—the springtime, when everything is lovely and lovable: the camp flowers all in bloom, the aroma of the trees burdening the air with delicious perfume, the fresh verdure and plenty of grass, the powerful, stout-hearted bounding of the horse (no longer "poor") beneath ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... rose or set with the sun, or disappeared from view in the sun's rays. At Alexandria, in Egypt, the length of the year was determined yet more exactly by observing when the sun rose exactly in the east and set exactly in the west, a date which fixed the equinox for them as for us. More than seventeen hundred years ago, Ptolemy, the great author of The Almagest, had fixed the length of the year to within a very few minutes. He knew it was a little less than 365 1/2 days. The dates of events in ancient history depend very largely on the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... Fellow, that is gone before, He's a Souldier, fit to stand by Caesar, And giue direction. And do but see his vice, 'Tis to his vertue, a iust Equinox, The one as long as th' other. 'Tis pittie of him: I feare the trust Othello puts him in, On some odde time of his infirmitie ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... recent German writers, would regard it as reflecting the passage of the Sun through a portion of the ecliptic. It is assumed that the primitive Babylonians were aware that in the course of ages the spring equinox must traverse the southern or watery region of the zodiac. This, on their system, signified a submergence of the whole universe in water, and the Deluge myth would symbolize the safe passage of the vernal Sun-god through that part of the ecliptic. But ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... Ningpo. I have a line from Oliphant, who took up my letter to Shanghae, and made a quick though rough passage. We shall be a good deal longer on the way, and my captain advises me to be off, to anticipate the equinox. I have just written a despatch to Lord Clarendon, to tell him that perhaps I may go direct from Shanghae to Japan, and so home. It is almost too good a prospect to ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the winds that crash Sound like a clarion, for the Tempest bluff Is Battle's sister. And when wild and rough, The north wind blows, the tower exultant cries "Behold me!" When hail-hurling gales arise Of blustering Equinox, to fan the strife, It stands erect, with martial ardor rife, A joyous soldier! When like yelping hound Pursued by wolves, November comes to bound In joy from rock to rock, like answering cheer To howling January now so near— "Come on!" the Donjon cries to blasts o'erhead— It has seen Attila, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... political and social life. Churches were too small to contain the immense throngs of fearful penitents: legacies and donations from conscience-stricken worshippers poured wealth into their treasuries. But once the awe-inspiring night of the vernal equinox that began the year 1000 had passed, and the bright March sun rose again on the fair earth, unconsumed by the wrath of God, the old world "seemed to thrill with new life; the earth cast off her outworn garments and clothed herself ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... cordial of incredible virtue" (Emerson)—sharp and chill, but with a milder tincture. To-day, though brisk and snell on the streets, the sunshine had a lively vigour, a generous quality, a promissory note of the equinox. I felt it from first rising this morning—the old demiurge at work! As I sat in the bathtub (when a man is fifty he may be pardoned for taking a warm bath on winter mornings) my mind fell upon the desire of wandering: it occurred to me that a spread of legs in the vital air ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... And yet this was only the day of the vernal equinox; it was most extraordinary. Everywhere the gutters ran streaming with water, the snow melting under the unexampled heat of the solar rays like wax in a candle flame. The trees growing in the square were leafless, and the tropic sun's rays blazed mercilessly through their ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... to the east of [l] the spot marked (*) is the place which the sun occupies at the time of the equinox. It is one of the two crossing places of the equinoctial, or equator, of the heavens, and ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... to Mrs. October, "I think Sister August lets her children romp too much. I always like improving games for mine, although I have great trouble to make Equinox toe the line ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... yellow, purple, green, Scarlet and white, their pleasing springs were seen; And gliding streams amongst the tender grass, Thickets and soft winds to refresh the place. After when winter maketh sharp the air, Warm leaves, and leisure, sports, and gallant cheer Enthrall low minds. Now th' equinox hath made The day t' equal the night; and Progne had With her sweet sister, each their old task ta'en: (Ah! how the faith in fortune placed is vain!) Just in the time, and place, and in the hour When humble tears should earthly joys devour, It ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... mode of culture for rice in Carolina:—It is sowed as soon as it conveniently can be after the vernal equinox, from which period until the middle, and even the last of May, is the usual time of putting it in the ground. It grows best in low marshy land, and should be sowed in furrows twelve inches asunder; it requires to be flooded, and thrives best if six inches under water; ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... customers and render them attractive. This custom is probably derived from the East, where the egg is the symbol of the primitive state of the world and of the creation of things. The new year formerly began at the spring equinox, at about Easter; and at that period of the renewal of Nature, a festival was celebrated in the new moon of the month Phamenoth, in honor of Osiris, when painted and gilded eggs were exchanged as presents, in reference to the beginning of all things. The transference of the commencement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... waiting the call and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the equinox, sagaciously observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is cramped by attention to established rules, and how this same imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and deadened by too much judgment. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... nothing I tell you but the weather. You're all a lot too good to me and indulge me too much, and I grow soft, and then every trifle rubs me the wrong way. I'm a regular spoilt child—I know it and a jolly good spanking is what I deserve. Burton, here, declares that the autumnal, like the vernal, equinox breeds hot humours and distempers in the blood. I believe we ought to be bled, spring and fall, like our forefathers. Look here, mother, don't take my grumbling to heart. I tell you I'm just a little hipped from the weather. Let's send for dear old Knott and get him to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... been so highly celebrated as a locality for taking this really fine and delicious fish, as Saint Mary's Falls, or the Sault,[27] as it is more generally and appropriately called. This fish resorts here in vast numbers, and is in season after the autumnal equinox, and continues so till the ice begins to run. It is worthy the attention of ichthyologists. It is a remarkable, but not singular fact in its natural history, that it is perpetually found in the attitude of ascent at these falls. It is taken only in the swift water at the foot of the last ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Moon and the planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Venus) were points which restrained the motion of the sky in its revolution. (See Book VI., 576.) (11) Mercury. (See Book IX., 777.) (12) That is, at the autumnal equinox. The priest states that the planet Mercury causes the rise of the Nile. The passage is difficult to follow; but the idea would seem to be that this god, who controlled the rise and fall of the waves of the sea, also when he was placed ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... the pollen of the white summer lily, twelve ounces of the pollen of the autumn hibiscus flower, and twelve ounces of the white plum in bloom in the winter. You take the four kinds of pollen, and put them in the sun, on the very day of the vernal equinox of the succeeding year to get dry, and then you mix them with the powder and pound them well together. You again want twelve mace of water, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to contain of being the immediate precursor of winter with all its horrors. There is no sufficient constancy with us of the recurrence of such a season, to make any special name needful. But now and again there comes a day, when the winds of the equinox have lulled themselves, and the chill of October rains have left the earth, and the sun gives a genial, luxurious warmth, with no power to scorch, with strength only to comfort. But here, as elsewhere, this luxury is laden with melancholy, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... replied Miss Pillby, who had heard about the equinox and its carryings on all her life without having arrived at any clear idea of its nature and properties. 'We shall have it very equinoctial before the end of the month, I've ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... are not generally equal. There is, however, one occasion in spring, and another in autumn, on which the day and the night are each twelve hours at all places on the earth. When the night and day are equal in spring, the point which the sun occupies on the heavens is termed the vernal equinox. There is similarly another point in which the sun is situated at the time of the autumnal equinox. In any investigation of the celestial movements the positions of these two equinoxes on the heavens are of primary importance, and Hipparchus, with the instinct of genius, perceived ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... time in the attitude of suffering. He knew what a restless night he had passed, and that a violent and incessant cough cut short his breathing. The king guessed that fatigue, and the first attacks of the equinox, had shaken his weakened frame, and that in short, at that critical moment, the action of his genius was in a manner chained down by his body; which had sunk under the triple load of fatigue, of fever, and of a malady which, probably, more than any other, prostrates the moral ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... the Vernal Equinox, it must be remembered; and (howsoever the old Solar Year is practically superseded by the clumsy Lunar Year that dates from the Mohammedan Hijra) still commemorated by a Festival that is said to have been appointed by the very Jamshyd whom ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... supplemented with added detail. "The national mind is hysterical beyond the usual and this is a time of heightened danger. It's the period when $200,000,000 are needed for crop-transportation and delivery. That means financial equinox." ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... definition of the seasons, the year is divided into eight parts, the first of forty-five days from the date of the rising of the west wind (February 7) to the date of the vernal equinox (March 24), the second of the ensuing forty-four days to the rising of the Pleiades (May 7), the third of forty-eight days to the summer solstice (June 24), the fourth of twenty-seven days to the rising of the Dog ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... traffic unfortunately only lasts six or eight days. The peasant hastens home to his hay-harvest; the merchant must quickly regulate the produce and manufactures he has purchased, and load his ships with them, so that they may sail and reach their destination before the storms of the autumnal equinox. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... high Arachosian plateau. In Kabul the snow lies for two or three months; the people seldom leave their houses, and sleep close to stoves. At Ghazni the snow has been known to lie long beyond the vernal equinox; the thermometer sinks to 10 deg. and 15 deg. below zero (Fahr.); and tradition relates the entire destruction of the population of Ghazni by snowstorms more than ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... content to be as though they had not been: to be found in the register of God, not in the records of men. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The Night of Time far surpasseth the Day, and who knoweth the Equinox?—Sir THOMAS BROWNE. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... wind, which blows in the Mexican Gulf, from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, are known not only to the sailors, but to all those who have lived some time in this city. The variation in the barometer is the surest sign. A land breeze from the north-west first blows gently, then varies to the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... verse; and in the pious book of travels ascribed to Sir John Mandeville, so widely read in the Middle Ages, it is declared that Jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and that a spear standing erect at the Holy Sepulchre casts no shadow at the equinox. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... persons who seem to have required the stimulus of necessity to make them break through an initial indolence of nature. When Johnson found fault with Gray for having times of the year when he wrote more easily, from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, he added that a man could write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it. True, no doubt! But to write doggedly is not to court favourable conditions for artistic work. It may be a finer sight for a moralist to see a man performing an appointed ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... did not get beyond plovers and lovers. I am still, however, harassed by the unauthentic Muse; if I cared to encourage her—but I have not the time, and anyway we are at the vernal equinox. It is funny enough, but my pottering verses are usually made (like the God-gifted organ voice's) at the autumnal; and this seems to hold at the Antipodes. There is here some odd secret of Nature. I cannot speak of politics; we wait and wonder. It seems (this is partly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... receives it, "warming it and fostering it in swaddling clothes, with unintermittent assiduity both night and day."[56] What hope of gain or advantage had they in those days? nay, or even now? for the hopes of parents are uncertain, and have to be long waited for. He who plants a vine in the spring equinox, gleans its vintage in the autumnal equinox; he who sows corn when the Pleiads set, reaps it when they rise; cattle and horses and birds have produce at once fit for use; whereas man's bringing up is ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... adoration of local saints. On the other hand as soon as Christianity became a moral power in {xviii} the world, it imposed itself even on its enemies. The Phrygian priests of the Great Mother openly opposed their celebration of the vernal equinox to the Christian Easter, and attributed to the blood shed in the taurobolium the redemptive power of the blood ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... variations—These were first discovered in 1780 by Cassini. They represent a cycle of annual change of small extent, from 15' to 18' only. In Paris and London the annual variation is greatest about the vernal equinox, or March 21st, and diminishes for the next three months, and slowly increases again during the nine following months. It varies during different epochs. (c) Diurnal variations were discovered in 1722 by Graham. A long needle has to be employed, or the reflection of a ray of light, as ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... father all the winter: and when the spring equinox drew near, all the Athenians grew sad and silent, and Theseus saw it, and asked the reason; but no one ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... no fair weather friend. The dusts of March, the showers of April, made no difference with him. He was there, always there, with his waterproof for the rain, his duster for the summer heat, and his sou-wester perched on his head when the Equinox set in. He had one of the most even dispositions I ever knew and always regarded me with the same mild, far-off look, whatever uniform or decoration he wore. He was the same with a blue jumper and overalls as he was with a diagonal suit with "This style $25" flying from the button-hole. There ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... towards the end of September; and at that time a quiet passage is likely, unless you are so unlucky as to encounter one of the cyclones which frequently attend the break-up of the season at this transition period. There is a tendency nowadays to discredit the equinox as a storm-breeder. As regards the particular day, doubtless recognition of a general fact may have lapsed into superstition as to a date; but in considering the phenomena of the monsoons, the great fixed currents of air blowing alternately to or from the heated or cooled continent of Asia, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... received no satisfactory explanation from science. It could not have been due to a solar eclipse, as has been suggested in ignorance, for the time was that of full moon; indeed the Passover season was determined by the first occurrence of full moon after the spring equinox. The darkness was brought about by miraculous operation of natural laws directed by divine power. It was a fitting sign of the earth's deep mourning over the impending death of her Creator.[1322] Of the mortal agony through which the Lord passed while ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me next to my gun. As for my face, the color 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. My beard I had once suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but, as I had both scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed into a large pair of Mahometan whiskers, such as I had seen ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... fresh-water formation, on which I was walking, still only approaches its completion; and the desiccated soil has not yet fully defined the boundaries of the river. At spring-tides, particularly when the line of the moon's apsides coincides with the syzygies, or when the ascending node is in the vernal equinox, or after heavy rains, the river still overflows its banks, and indicates its originally extended scite ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... Today the sun is on the equator, and we are at the equinox when nights are equal to the days, as the word testifies. The harvest is over. The apples are no more. Yet the tree still is active and preparing for another year (Fig. 12). The spurs are now thick and stout, bearing sturdy ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... equinox implies the condition that the night is equal to the day. To a resident on the equator the night is no doubt equal to the day at all times in the year, but to one who lives on any other part of the earth, in either ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... added. Thus the Clementine writer calls John a 'Hemerobaptist,' i.e. member of a sect which practised daily baptism [Endnote 167:1]. He talks about a rumour which became current in the reign of Tiberius about the 'vernal equinox,' that at the same season a king should arise in Judaea who should work miracles, making the blind to see, the lame to walk, healing every disease, including leprosy, and raising the dead; in the incident of the Canaanite woman (whom, with Mark, he calls ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... time for seeing some of the attractions of Belvoir; but Lady Bloomfield has written of her Majesty's proverbial good fortune in these excursions: "The Queen yachts during the equinox, and has the sea a dead calm; visits about in the dead of winter, and has summer weather." There were other respects in which Belvoir was in its glory in midwinter—it belonged to a hunting neighbourhood and a hunting ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... infallible signs. Taken in conjunction with the eruption of tops and marbles among the small boys, and the purchase of fishing-tackle and golf-clubs by the old boys, they certify us that the vernal equinox has arrived, not only in the celestial regions, but also ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... of Terror.[1] These events are known in the historic calendar as the Revolution of Thermidor in the Year II. After the fall of the monarchy, the Convention decided that the year should begin with the autumnal equinox, and that the enumeration should date from the birth of the Republic. The Year I. opens on September 22, 1792; the Year II. opens on the same day of 1793. The month of Thermidor begins on July 19. The memorable Ninth Thermidor therefore corresponds to July 27, 1794. This has commonly been taken ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... envenenar to poison. enviado envoy, messenger. enviar to send. envidioso envious. envoltorio bundle. envolver to involve, wrap. epilogo epilogue. episodio episode. epistola epistle. epoca epoch, time. equidad f. equity. equinoccio equinox. equipaje m. baggage. equitacion f. horsemanship. equivocar vr. to mistake. erguir to erect, raise up straight. erial m. unfilled ground. ermita hermitage. esbirro bailiff, guard. escalera staircase. escalon m. step of a stair. escapar vr. to escape. escape ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... — better than the Teufelsdrockh of 1830, in his liveliest Scotch imagination, ever dreamed, or mortal man had ever told. At best, a week in these dim Northern seas, without means of speech, within the Arctic circle, at the equinox, lent itself to gravity if not to gloom; but only a week before, breakfasting in the restaurant at Stockholm, his eye had caught, across, the neighboring table, a headline in a Swedish newspaper, announcing an attempt on the life of President McKinley, and from Stockholm to Trondhjem, and so ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... worship Gauri Ganesh together as an important rite of the wedding. Their conjunction in this manner lends colour to the idea that they are held to be mother and son. In Rajputana Gauri is worshipped as the corn goddess at the Gangore festival about the time of the vernal equinox, especially by women. The meaning of Gauri, Colonel Tod states, is yellow, emblematic of the ripened harvest, when the votaries of the goddess adore her effigies, in the shape of a matron painted the colour of ripe corn. Here she is seen as Ana-purna (the corn-goddess), the benefactress ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... found no stars that had appeared or disappeared in the interval of 150 years; but he found that all the stars seemed to have changed their places with reference to that point in the heavens where the ecliptic is 90 degrees from the poles of the earth—i.e., the equinox. He found that this could be explained by a motion of the equinox in the direction of the apparent diurnal motion of the stars. This discovery of precession of the equinoxes, which takes place at the rate ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... dwellings, into the open fields, and under the soft, warm sunshine, and the softer light of a full moon. The loveliest season of the whole year—that transient but delightful interval between the storms of the "wild equinox, with all their wet," and the dark, short, dismal days which precede the rigor of winter—is now with us. The sun rises through a soft and hazy atmosphere; the light mist clouds melt gradually before him; and his noontide light rests warm and clear on still woods, tranquil ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... teak-built, and only launched last year. We must try to have her, whatever happens. She won't hurt where she is, unless it comes on to blow. Our sands hold fast without nipping, as you know, like a well-bred sheep-dog, and the White Pig is the toughest of all of them. She may stay there till the equinox, without much mischief, if the present light airs continue. But the worst job will be with the prisoners; they are the plague of all these affairs, and we can't imitate Boney by poisoning them. On ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... we are ever deceived; but after all, what is it but the conflict between arbitrary and natural law? The almanac-maker says that on the first day of September autumn is due. Nature, the orbit-maker, proclaims it summer until, the month three-quarters old, the equinox is crossed. Nature is always right, and after the usual breezy argument sends Summer, her garments a bit storm-tattered, perchance, back ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... At the beginning of the Christian Era, the constellation Aries, or Ram, occupied the equinoctial place, being in the first degree of that constellation. About 2150 B.C. the first degree of Taurus, or Bull, contained the Equinox. When the constellation Taurus, or the Bull, was in the first division, or the equinoctial place, the people used a symbol representing a bull, described as giving fecundity, a deity of vegetation as at Dodona, in their religious ceremonies. One of the statuettes ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... of the monstrous turbot, the light odor of the sea evoked in his mind, prone to unexpected suggestions, that corner of Breton, that poor village of sailors, where he had been belated the other autumn until the equinox, and where he had rendered assistance in some dreadful storms. He suddenly called to mind that terrible night when the fishing-boats could not come back to port, the night that he had passed on the mole amid a group of frightened women, standing where the sea-spray ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... said to the engineer, "we shall finish it, captain, and it is time, for the season is advancing and the equinox will soon be here. Well, if necessary, we must put in to Tabor Island to spend the winter. But think of Tabor Island after Lincoln Island. Ah, how unfortunate! Who could have ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... in Heaven, Ned, and Things on Earth, and Things under the Earth. The old Story, whereof you have alreadie seen many Parcels; but, you know, my Vein ne'er flows so happily as from the autumnal to the vernal Equinox. Howbeit, there is Something in the Quality of this Air would arouse the old ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... increasing, amounted to ten days at the time of its correction. This was done by Gregory XIII, in a brief issued in March, 1582; he reformed the calendar, directing that the fifth day of October in that year be reckoned as the fifteenth. The vernal equinox, which in the old calendar had receded to March 11, was thus restored to its true place, March 21. The "new style" calendar is also known as the Gregorian, from its founder; the system adopted by Gregory was calculated by Luigi Lilio Ghiraldi, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... attending to, when we endeavour to prevent the returns of maniacal or epileptic diseases; whose periods (at the beginning of them especially) frequently observe the syzygies of the moon and sun, and particularly about the equinox. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... forward once to sing one of his most famous and familiar songs, and for his life could not recall the first line of it;—he told his mishap to the audience, and they screamed it at him in a chorus of a thousand voices. Milton could not write to suit himself, except from the autumnal to the vernal equinox. One in the clothing-business, who, there is reason to suspect, may have inherited, by descent, the great poet's impressible temperament, let a customer slip through his fingers one day without fitting him with a new garment. "Ah!" said he to a friend of mine, who was standing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... passed the autumn equinox, that is to say, September 23d, the winter fairly begins in the arctic regions. The sun, having gradually sunk to the horizon, disappeared at last, October 23d, lighting up merely the tops of the mountains with its oblique rays. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... This year, however, the equinox brought no storm with it, and the lighted fires have continued to burn with such fierceness that not only the swamp, but the surrounding country, is in danger of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... verges on, the mornings and evenings get cooler in relation to the mid-day heat; and about the equinox, the difference in the temperature of mid-day and midnight is at its maximum. We have therefore a powerful sedative effect in the morning, which braces and invigorates the body; a powerful reactive effect at mid-day, which rouses and stimulates ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... importance of the event a line is drawn across the tablet although no interruption takes place in the official order of the Eponymes. Here then we have notice of a solar eclipse which was visible at Nineveh which occurred within 90 days of the (vernal) equinox (taking that as the normal commencement of the year) and which we may presume to have been total from the prominence given to the record, and these are conditions which during a century before and after the era of Nabonassar are alone fulfilled by the eclipse which took place ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... and putting on his cap. "See you later, Miss Jane. Morgan's back ag'in to work, thanks to you, doctor. That was a pretty bad sprain he had—he's all right now, though; went on practice yesterday. I'm glad of it—equinox is comin' on and we can't spare a man, or half a one, these days. May be blowin' a livin' gale 'fore the week's out. Good-by, Miss Jane; good-by, doctor." And he shut the ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... are when sun and man, by stress of work, or clouds, or light, or it may be some Process of the Equinox, make draughts upon the untilted day, and solace themselves in the morning. For lack of dew the sun draws lengthy sucks of cloud quite early, and men who have labored far and dry, and scattered the rime of the night with ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Crikswich, within and without, the likeness to its most perfect image, together, it must be confessed, with a degree of nervousness that invested common events with some of the terrors of the Last Trump, when one night, just upon the passing of the vernal equinox, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which, after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me, next to my gun. As for my face, the color of it was really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not at all careful of it, and living within nineteen degrees of the equinox. My beard I had once suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but as I had both scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed into a large pair of Mahometan whiskers such as I had seen worn by some ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... affairs that they determined to have a new chronology. Accordingly a commission of scientists was appointed to formulate a system, which was adopted in October 1793. The "Era of the Republic" was to be counted from the autumnal equinox, 1792. The year was divided into twelve months, as before, but they were renamed (Thermidor hot month, Fructidor fruit month, Nivose snow month, &c.), and ran in periods of thirty days each from the 22d of September. This left five days undistributed, which were set apart as feast-days in ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of advantages would accrue to the French from an adherence to the 1st of Vendemiaire, or 23d of September of the Gregorian calendar, as the first day of the year. The weather, after the autumnal equinox, is generally settled, in consequence of the air having been purified by the pre-existing gales, the ordinary forerunners of that period: and the Parisians would not be obliged to brave the rain, the wind, the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the fall of the year 18—, I embarked on board the ship Cosmo, bound from the port of Bristol to that of New York. The season was unpropitious, the lingering effects of the autumnal equinox rendering it more than probable that the passage would be tempestuous. The result soon proved the correctness of this surmise, for soon after the vessel departed from Kingroad, and before she got clear of the English coast, we experienced boisterous ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... principal stars of the Northern Heavens. First, you see the Ram, the initial sign of the Zodiac; because at the epoch at which the actual Zodiac was fixed, the Sun entered this sign at the vernal equinox, and the equator crossed the ecliptic at this point. This constellation, in which the horns of the Ram (third magnitude) are the brightest, is situated between Andromeda and the Pleiades. Two thousand years ago, the Ram was regarded as the ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... of the astrologers is that the sky has changed since the rules of the art were established. The sun, which at the equinox was in Aries in the time of the Argonauts, is to-day in Taurus; and the astrologers, to the great ill-fortune of their art, to-day attribute to one house of the sun what belongs visibly to another. However, that is not a demonstrative reason against ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... between the Babylonian and Egyptian years appears in the fact that the Babylonian new year dates from about the period of the vernal equinox and not from the solstice. Lockyer associates this with the fact that the periodical inundation of the Tigris and Euphrates occurs about the equinoctial period, whereas, as we have seen, the Nile flood comes ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... AUTUMNAL EQUINOX. The time when the sun crosses the equator, under a southerly motion, and the days and nights are then everywhere ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... enthusiastic Polish Chivalry being good for nothing against regular musketry,—King Stanislaus finds that he will have to quit Warsaw, and seek covert somewhere. Quits Warsaw this day; gets covert in Dantzig. And, in fact, from this 22d of September, day of the autumnal equinox, 1733, is a fugitive, blockaded, besieged Stanislaus: an Imaginary King thenceforth. His real Kingship had lasted ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... vividly described: "It was now the beginning of the month of October; already the gales which attend upon the equinox swept through the woods and trees; the delicate chestnut woods, which last dare encounter the blasts of spring, and whose tender leaves do not expand until they may become a shelter to the swallow, had already changed their hues, and shone yellow and red, amidst ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... Parnell's, and Parnell was an archbishop, she was so vexed that she would not go to drive with him that morning, though he apologized and humbled himself in every way. He pleaded that it was such a beautiful day, it must be the last they were going to have; it was getting near the equinox, and this must be a weather-breeder. She let him go off alone, for he would not lose the drive, and she watched him out of sight from her upper window with a heavy heart. As soon as he was fairly gone, she wanted to go after him, and she was wild all the forenoon. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... south, thence to descend obliquely towards the west. During the summer months the obliquity of his course diminished, and he came closer to Egypt; during the winter it increased, and he went farther away. This double movement recurred with such regularity from equinox to solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of the god's departure and the day of his return could be confidently predicted. The Egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their conceptions of the nature of the world. The solar bark always kept close to that ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... nights of September, when the autumnal equinox is past, and grey September fades into brown October, why are the Champs Elysees illuminated; why is Paris dancing, and flinging fire-works? They are gala-nights, these last of September; Paris may well dance, and the Universe: the Edifice of the Constitution is completed! Completed; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... sagitarius, is no longer the first sign, which gives fruitfulness to the flocks, inspires men with a love of justice, or forms the hero. 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. When, therefore, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... into close contact with the sea had a charm for him, even that mock combat with the waves of the autumn equinox on the flat shore of Fife. Therefore at this time although classes and study were a weariness to him his days spent in the old-fashioned town of Anstruther, or on the desolate coast of Caithness, had many pleasures; had many romances also, for everywhere he went he picked up odd and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... were only these words: 'Dear Porthos, set out, if you would wish to arrive before the Equinox. I expect you.'" ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... year from the autumnal Equinox, and their sacred year from the vernal: and the first day of the first month was on the visible new moon, which was ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... mentioned by Cicero (Ad Atticum, xi. 6). As to his age, Drumann observes, "He was born B.C. 106, and was consequently 58 years old when he was killed, on the 29th of September, or on the day before his birthday, about the time of the autumnal equinox according to the unreformed calendar." ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... was—what man's is not?—so much that of one who would love and cherish and defend her under any conditions, changes, charges, or revelations, that her gloom lessened as she basked in it. The season meanwhile was drawing onward to the equinox, and though it was still fine, the days were much shorter. The dairy had again worked by morning candlelight for a long time; and a fresh renewal of Clare's pleading occurred one morning ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... another hard thunder-storm last night. The last few days have begun the vernal equinox. It rained torrents all night and stopped at dawn. The wind was northeast and cool. Cloudy overhead, with purple horizon all around—a forbidding day. But we decided to go fishing, anyhow. We had new, delicate three-six tackles to try. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... goodness, without which nothing could have continued to exist. If not for it, the myriads of evil spirits had soon put an end to the generations of men. But the goodness of God has ordained, that in every Nisan, at the time of the spring equinox, the seraphim shall approach the world of spirits, and intimidate them so that they fear to do harm to men. Again, if God in His goodness had not given protection to the weak, the tame animals would have been extirpated long ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... sun had passed the autumnal equinox—that is to say, on the 23rd of September—winter may be said to begin in the Arctic regions. The sun disappears entirely on the 23rd of October, lighting up with its oblique rays the summits of the frozen mountains. The doctor ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... hand came next, might possibly want correction, as to the orthography and pointing; having, as the summer came on, not been showed any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal; and that whatever he attempted at other times was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Kirwan.—When there has been no particular storm about the time of the Spring Equinox (March 21st); if a storm arises from the east on or before that day, or if a storm from any point of the compass arise near a week after the Equinox, then in either of these cases the succeeding Summer ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... proceed to the final embarcation, but at the last moment their inexperience of the sea nearly compromised the success of the expedition. Even if they were not absolutely ignorant of the ebb and flow of the tide, they certainly did not know how dangerous the spring tide could prove at the equinox under the influence of a south wind. The rising tide then comes into conflict with the volume of water brought down by the stream, and in the encounter the banks are broken down, and sometimes large districts ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... poor, perhaps fortunately, have little time for mourning. As the first hint of the long winter came in on the September's equinox, poor Sara had to rouse herself, and she began to look about her with despairing eyes. Friends, so far, had been most kind, and the little family had never actually suffered; but now that the few summer resources for picking up an occasional dollar ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... staining as if they too were asleep, or in a resting stage. The characteristic alive qualities of these cells return, without relation to food or climate, when the animal comes to in the spring, at the vernal equinox. Hibernation may, perhaps, be put down to a seasonal wave of inactivity ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... our rocks Hurl breakers in a fleecy mass, Like wolves that chase stampeding flocks Over the brink of a crevasse, While thunders down the Alpine pass The deluge of the equinox. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... rendering it compact. Nor, indeed, is there time for much settling down. The calotte does not form until several months after the winter solstice, and it begins to melt, as a rule, shortly after the vernal equinox. (The interval between these two epochs in the southern hemisphere of Mars is 176 days.) The snow lies on the ground, at the outside, a couple of months. At times it melts while it is still fresh fallen. Thus, at the opposition ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... scarcely a living creature to this sandy and dry country. By digging, however, in the ground, several insects, large spiders, and lizards were found in a half-torpid state. On the 15th, a few animals began to appear, and by the 18th (three days from the equinox), everything announced the commencement of spring. The plains were ornamented by the flowers of a pink wood-sorrel, wild peas, oenotherae, and geraniums; and the birds began to lay their eggs. Numerous Lamellicorn ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... ship that, a hundred years before, Freighted deep with its goodly store, In the gales of the equinox went ashore. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancients, found upon a mummy-case in the British Museum a delineation of the signs of the zodiac, and the position of the planets; the date to which they pointed was the autumnal equinox of the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell, to whom the fact was communicated, employed his assistants to ascertain the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system on the equinox ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... year's early nonage.] "At the latter part of January, when the sun enters into Aquarius, and the equinox is drawing near, when the hoar-frosts in the morning often wear the appearance of snow but are ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... moons of shining light or flower-gardens blooming bright; and a son as he were the moon; and it was his wont to keep two festivals in the twelve- month, those of the Nau-Roz, or New Year, and Mihrgn the Autumnal Equinox,[FN2] on which occasions he threw open his palaces and gave largesse and made proclamation of safety and security and promoted his chamberlains and viceroys; and the people of his realm came in to him and saluted him and gave him joy of the holy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... I took a greater number in consequence. The pasturage was still meagre and scarcely any water remained on the face of the earth. It was unusually low in the holes last year, but this season very few indeed contained any. The equinox however was at hand, and I could not suppose that it was never to rain again, however hopeless the aspect of the country appeared at ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... spectacles of the instruction at St. Denis and the consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox by a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... two days before the vernal equinox, I sailed from Liverpool for Pernambuco, in the southern hemisphere, on the coast of Brazil. Arrived there, I embarked on board of a Portuguese brig for Cayenne in Guiana. On the 14th day after leaving Pernambuco, the brig cast anchor ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... seem alike to love to have their counsels taken; and the equinox being now gone by, Mrs. Busk was ready to begin before the tardy sun was up, who begins to give you short measure at once when he finds the weights go against him. Mrs. Busk considered not the sun, neither any ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... was but rough sailing-ground. During the first fortnight we were fortunate enough to make two recaptures of considerable value, which arrived safely in the Thames, after which we had a succession of gales front the southward, it being the time of the equinox, which drove us close to the sands of Yarmouth, and we even had difficulty in clearing them and getting into sea-room by standing to the eastward. The weather still continued very bad, and we were lying-to under storm sails for several days, and at last found ourselves a degree and ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... periods of the religious feasts among the Indians, is a good historical proof that they counted time by and observed a weekly Sabbath, long after their arrival in America. They began the year at the appearance of the first new moon of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses. 'Till the seventy years captivity [19] commenced, the Israelites had only numeral names for their months, except Abib and Ethanim; the former signifying a green ear of corn, the latter robust or valiant; ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Geneva[261] watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac[262] he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice[263] he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson |
