g io Handbook of Nature-Study 



three young friends, whom we will call by the following names : There is 

 one in Quito, Ecuador, of whom we will speak as Equator Shem; the one on 

 the Island of Cuba is named Tropic of Cancer Ham ; and the other in San 

 Paulo, Brazil, answers to the name of Tropic of Capricorn Japhet. 



What happens to these three boys, Shem, Ham and Japhet, is this. At 

 certain times of the year they have no shadow when they go home for dinner 

 at noon. This state of affairs is no fault of theirs. It is not because they 

 are too thin to make shadows. It is due to the position of the sun. If the 

 boys should look for that luminary at noon, they would find it as directly 

 over their heads as a plumb line. It is a case of direct or straight blows from 

 rays of the sun, and, oh, how hot hotter than any Fourth of July the oldest 

 inhabitant can remember! These three boys are not hit squarely on the 

 head on one and the same day. Each is hit three months after the other. 

 The first boy to be hit this year in the above manner will be the Equator 

 Shem. The time will be during the last half of March. Can any of my 

 young friends in this grade tell me the exact day of March that Equator 

 Shem has no shadow? If no one of you can answer that question at this 

 time, you had best talk it over with your friends, and bring your answers 

 tomorrow. It happens at a time when our days are of about equal length. 



Another thing about this particular day is that our almanacs call it the 

 first day of spring. All because no boy or anything else has a shadow on the 

 equator at noon time. People and bluebirds and robins in the state of New 

 York will see squalls of snow about that time, and there will be some freez- 

 ing nights. But after the first day of spring the cold storms do not last so 

 long, as was the case during December, January, and early February, when 

 the sun's rays hit us with very glancing blows. Watch to see how much 

 faster the sun melts the snow on the last days of March than it did at 

 Christmas time. The light is also stronger and brighter, and plants in 

 greenhouses and our homes have more life, and are not so shiftless, so to 

 speak. Even the hens feel the influence, for they begin to lay more eggs and 

 cackle, and down goes the price of eggs. Do not forget to learn what day in 

 March spring begins, when the Equator boy finds it so hot that he would like 

 to take off his flesh, and sit in his bones. After a few days, Equator Shem 

 will find he again has a shadow at noon. A short one it is true, but it will get 

 longer and longer each day. Now his shadow will be on the south side of him. 

 Is this a queer thing to happen? On which side of you is your noon-time 

 shadow ? I will give every one of you a red apple that finds it anywhere but 

 on the north side of him at twelve o'clock. Every time the sun shines at 

 noon, watch to find your old uncle in the wrong, and thereby get the apple. 

 Each day that the shadow of Equator Shem becomes longer and longer, the 

 noon-day shadow of Tropic of Cancer Ham, living on the Island of Cuba, will 

 be getting shorter and shorter, until at last there comes a day during the last 

 of June that he, too, will have no shadow, and the almanac says that that 

 day is the beginning of summer. 



Now it will be the turn of the Tropic of Cancer Ham, on the Island of 

 Cuba, to say the weather is hotter than two Fourths of July beat into one, 

 and he too will wish that he could take off his flesh, and sit in his bones. 

 Everybody in the state of New York will say that the first summer day is 

 the longest day of the year. It is on this day that Equator Shem will have 

 as long a shadow as he ever had in his life. No United States boy will ever 

 be without a shadow at noon so long as he remains in his own country. 

 When the eight o'clock curfew bell says it is time for boys and girls to go to 



