THE SEASON OF THE YEAR. 231 



pendent upon them. The rhythm of the world has set up an organic 

 rhythm which now spontaneously and automatically follows it. 



At first sight, to the dweller in the temperate zone at the present 

 day, the questions I have put above may seem needless, not to say 

 childish. But that is perhaps because we have all too much the 

 habit of taking it for granted that what is true here and now has 

 also been true everywhere and always. A first visit to the tropics 

 often enough rudely disturbs this uninquiring attitude of mind. For 

 in the tropics, and especially in the equatorial region, there is no 

 winter and no summer, no spring and no autumn. The world wags 

 wearily through an unending display of monotonous greenery. As 

 far as temperature goes, the year is pretty much alike in all its 

 months. Yet not only do equatorial men recognize the existence 

 of the year as a natural epoch quite as much as other men — not only 

 do equatorial savages celebrate annual feasts, count ages by years, 

 and perform certain rites in certain months only — but also animal 

 and vegetable nature recognizes the year ; trees have their month for 

 blossoming and fruiting, birds their month for assuming the plum- 

 age of courtship, for nesting and hatching, almost as markedly as 

 elsewhere. The recognition of the year both by man and by Nature 

 is not therefore entirely dependent upon the difference of summer 

 and winter, as such. We must go deeper, and I think, when we come 

 to consider geological time, much deeper, if we wish to understand 

 the true character of yearliness — a word which I venture here to 

 coin to express this meaning. 



Have you ever quite realized what the tropical year is like? Sup- 

 pose you are living on or near the equator, then in December the 

 sun is south of you and at its greatest distance away; you have, so 

 to speak, a relative winter. But in March the sun is overhead; it is 

 now full midsummer. By the end of June the sun has gone north, 

 and is once more on a tropic; you have a second winter; not much 

 of a winter, I admit, but still, a relative winter. By September he 

 has returned overhead again, and you are enduring a second sum- 

 mer. In December he has once more retreated to the southern tropic 

 (Capricorn), and it is comparative winter. Thus the equatorial year 

 consists of four distinct seasons, in two of which the sun stands 

 directly overhead, while in two he is at his northern or southern 

 limit. I may add that the effect is always curious when, as you face 

 the sun, you see that he is moving in his diurnal path, not from left 

 to right (" the way of the sun," as we say), but from right to left (or 

 " widdershins "). You are never till then aware how natural and 

 inevitable has seemed the opposite direction: when you find it re- 

 versed the effect is surprising. 



Now, the distance to which the sun travels north or south of you, 



