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Democritus, that the snows which are in the northern climates when the sun enters the summer solstice are dissolved and diffused; from those vapors clouds are compacted, and these are forcibly driven by the Etesian winds into the southern parts and into Egypt, from whence violent showers are poured; and by this means the fens of Egypt are filled with water, and the river Nile hath its inundation.
It would be strange were it otherwise, considering the ease with which a record of days could be kept from Nile flood to Nile flood, or from solstice to solstice. But this, of course, applies only to an approximate count. There is some reason to believe that in the earliest period the Egyptians made this count only 360 days.
They are best fed on corn and barley bran. The jennies are bred before the solstice so that they may have their foals at the same season in the following year, for their period of gestation is twelve months.
Hence we have an explanation of the Eastern Buddhas and Crishnas, all of which were born of virgins at the winter solstice.
Every year, when the sun passes the summer solstice, the "Two souls with but a single thought,"
We were to be married at sunrise sharp, on the first day of the next century, and to lay the corner-stone of our observatory at the exact moment of the summer solstice of the same year. These were Margaret's suggestions, but even I was not averse to letting my friends see I had a little sentiment.
When we pass from the east to the west of Europe we still find the summer solstice celebrated with rites of the same general character. Down to about the middle of the nineteenth century the custom of lighting bonfires at midsummer prevailed so commonly in France that there was hardly a town or a village, we are told, where they were not kindled.
If we connect these two influences, the annual and diurnal successions of cold and heat, in their joint effect, we find, that about, or a little after the summer solstice, the influence of the sun being at its maximum, the nervous sensibility, heat, circulating excitement, and cutaneous secretions of the body, are also at their maximum.
It was an inauspicious beginning of active service, and typical of the many long and weary weeks of wet discomfort that the Sixth of Michigan was destined to experience before the summer solstice had fairly passed.
The ancient societies did not trouble themselves about the matter; they froze or thawed, were hot or cold, as it pleased the gods. They did not think of fleeing from winter any more than from the summer solstice, and consequently they enjoyed a certain contentment of mind that is absent from modern life. We are more intelligent, and therefore more discontented and unhappy.
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