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Right ascension, by the way, expresses the distance of a celestial body, such as a star or a planet, east of the vernal equinox, or the first point of Aries, which is an arbitrary point on the equator of the heavens, which serves, like the meridian of Greenwich on the earth, as a starting-place for reckoning longitude.

A large chair stood in the centre of the dais, and over it a gray wolf-skin had been draped; certainly this must be the official seat of Dom Gillian himself. But as yet it stood empty. How hot the sun was! And yet this was only the day of the vernal equinox; it was most extraordinary.

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.

"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. Those which are born after the time are usually defective and unfit for use. When a mare is stinted she makes it known by defending herself.

The alteration of its position with respect to the stars amounts to about 11" in a year, but since the equinox is regressing in the opposite direction at the rate of 50" in a year, the whole annual variation of the longitude of the terrestrial perihelion amounts to 61". Laplace has considered two remarkable epochs in connection with this fact; viz: the epoch at which the major axis of the earth's orbit coincided with the line of the equinoxes, and the epoch at which it stood perpendicular to that line.

At a certain moment, with each new generation of girls, there comes an epidemical desire in maiden bosoms to dedicate their sweet young lives to the service of what Esther called "horrible dirty people." At these periods the hospitals are flooded with applications from young girls whom the vernal equinox urges first to be mothers, and, failing motherhood, nurses.

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 drive out the devil with his lancet?

They occur in all months of the year, but the greater number take place about the time of the equinoxes. The most violent ones occur at the autumnal equinox, and on an average, two or three occur every year, and sometimes one follows another at a very short interval.

Mithra, as we have seen, is the Sun in the sign of the Bull, exactly parallel to Jesus, the Sun in the sign of the Lamb, both the one and the other being symbolised by that sign of the zodiac in which the sun was at the spring equinox of his supposed date.

They were killed with spades and hoes, and their bodies buried in the middle of a field which had just been tilled. At Lagos in Guinea it was the custom annually to impale a young girl alive soon after the spring equinox in order to secure good crops. Along with her were sacrificed sheep and goats, which, with yams, heads of maize, and plantains, were hung on stakes on each side of her.