a point which is so well known. Everyone understands
and appreciates the joy of finding that the long darkness
is giving way, that the Sun is growing in strength, and
that the days are winning a victory over the nights. The
birds and flowers reappear, and the promise of Spring is
in the air. But it may be worth while to give an elementary
explanation of the ASTRONOMICAL meaning of this period,
because this is not always understood, and yet it is very
important in its bearing on the rites and creeds of the early
religions. The priests who were, as I have said, the early
students and inquirers, had worked out this astronomical
side, and in that way were able to fix dates and
to frame for the benefit of the populace myths and legends,
which were in a certain sense explanations of the order of
Nature, and a kind of "popular science."

The Equator, as everyone knows, is an imaginary line
or circle girdling the Earth half-way between the North
and South poles. If you imagine a transparent Earth with
a light at its very centre, and also imagine the SHADOW
of this equatorial line to be thrown on the vast concave
of the Sky, this shadow would in astronomical parlance
coincide with the Equator of the Sky--forming an imaginary
circle half-way between the North and South celestial poles.

The Equator, then, may be pictured as cutting across the
sky either by day or by night, and always at the same
elevation--that is, as seen from any one place. But the
Ecliptic (the other important great circle of the heavens)
can only be thought of as a line traversing the constellations