234 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
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TO THE SAME. 
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Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles 
Hyberni ; vel quee tardis mora noctibus obstet.”” 
SELBORNE. 
GENTLEMEN who have outlets might contrive to make ornament 
subservient to utility : a pleasing eye-trap might also contribute to 
promote science: an obelisk in a garden or park might be both an 
embellishment and an heliotrope. 
Any person that is curious, and enjoys the advantage of a good 
horizon, might, with little trouble, make two heliotropes ; the one for 
the winter, the other for the summer solstice : and the two erections 
might be constructed with very little expense ; for two pieces of 
timber frame-work, about ten or twelve feet high, and four feet broad 
at the base, and close lined with plank, would answer the purpose. 
The erection for the former should, if possible, be placed within 
sight of some window in the common sitting-parlour; because men, 
at that dead season of the year, are usuaily within doors at the close of 
the day ; while that for the latter might be fixed for any given spot 
in the garden or outlet : whence the owner might contemplate, in a 
fine summer’s evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to the 
northward at the season of the longest days. Now nothing would 
be necessary but to place these two objects with so much exactness, 
that the westerly limb of the sun, at setting, might but just clear the 
winter heliotrope to the west of it on the shortest day ; and that 
the whole disc of the sun, at the longest day, might exactly at setting 
also clear the summer heliotrope to the north of it. 
By this simple expedient it would soon appear that there is no 
such thing, strictly speaking, asa solstice; for, from the shortest day, 
the owner would, every clear evening, see the disc advancing, at its © 
setting, to the westward of the object ; and, from the longest day 
observe the sun retiring backwards every evening at its setting, 
