Aries, the Ram, 66 Taurus, the Bull, 141 Gemini, the Twins, 85 Cancer, the Crab, 83 Leo, the Lion, 95 Virgo, the Virgin, 110 Libra, the Balance, 51 Scorpio, the Scorpion, 44 Sagittarius, the Archer, 69 Capricornus, the Goat, 51 Aquarius, the Water-Bearer, 108 Pisces, the Fishes, 113
[Footnote 1: Tennyson, "In Memoriam," cvi.]
[Footnote 3: Homer, "Odyssey," Book v., 121-124.]
[Footnote 5: The pole-star, however, is not the true polar point, but distant from it about 1° 32', which, in A.D. 2100, will be decreased to 26' 30".]
[Footnote 6: Homer, "Odyssey," Book v., 275.]
[Footnote 7: Manilius, "Astronomicon," Book i., 291-300.]
[Footnote 8: Manilius, "Astronomicon," i., 308, 309.]
[Footnote 9: This displacement amounts to about fifty seconds annually, or, more accurately, to 50".3. It is easy, therefore, to calculate that the complete rotation of the terrestrial axis around the poles of the ecliptic will occupy 25,765 years.]
[Footnote 10: These are also called the Pointers, because an imaginary line from the lower to the upper, prolonged in the same direction, passes nearly over the Polar Star.]
[Footnote 11: Pliny, "Historia Naturalis," Book ii., 24.]
Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold. --KEATS.
The winter of 1867-68 will count among the severest recorded in meteorological annals. As early as the winter solstice the cold began to make itself felt. In a few days the centigrade thermometer sank to 12° below zero, through the influence of a very keen north-east wind. At Paris, where, on an average, the winter temperature is two degrees higher than in the surrounding country, the Seine was completely frozen for upwards of a fortnight. To meet with a similar phenomenon we must go back as far as 1788. In January 1830, when, on the 17th, the temperature sank down to 17°.3, the Seine was also frozen, but the ice speedily melted. The extreme cold of 1788 coincides, like that of 1830, with the appearance of two comets. In bringing together these and other similar facts, some writers are induced to believe themselves authorised in establishing theories which attribute a certain frigorific influence to the comets. But no such coincidence existed in the winter of 1867-68, nor in any other years signalised by the occurrence of excessive frost.