18 MR. moseley's address. 



Mr. Pickering treats the notion, that the moon has an influence 

 upon limber or vegetation, as visionary. 



1 have before said, that it is not yet well settled whether the 

 moon has any influence upon vegetation. It is, indeed, a singu- 

 lar fact, that this subject should remain unsettled even to the pres- 

 ent day ; and yet it is so far unsettled, that probably one half of 

 our farmers who have occasion to sow a field of turnips, would 

 prefer the old of the moon. I have never had any belief in the 

 supposed influence of the moon, and have generally adopted the 

 opinion, that industry and sunshine will do very well without 

 any aid from the moon. 1 have generally ranked this opinion 

 of the moon's influence, with those superstitions which would 

 give importance to the circumstance, whether the moon was first 

 seen over the right or left shoulder, or whether an enterprise 

 would be successful commenced on Friday. And yet some 

 men of great science and experience are firm in the belief of its 

 influence. 



It would be an amusing exercise to collect the various opin- 

 ions and facts, both ancient and modern, upon this subject, but 

 it would far exceed the limits of this discourse. I will however 

 remark, that the ancients paid great regard to the age of the 

 moon in the felling of their timber. Their rules appear to have 

 been to fell timber in the wane of the moon, or four days after 

 the new moon ; some say let it be the last quarter. Pliny or- 

 ders it to be in the very article of the change, which happening in 

 ^he last of the winter solstice, the timber he says, will be immortal. 

 Columella says, from the twentieth to the twenty-eighth day* 

 Cato, four days after the full. Vegetlus, from the fifteenth to 

 the twenty-fifth for ship timber, but never in the increase : trees 

 then much abound with moisture, the only source of putrefac- 

 tion. 



Commodore Porter, we have seen, is of the opinion that tim- 

 ber should be felled in the old of the moon to give it durability, 

 and he expressly says that its influence is nearly, if not quite as 

 powerful as the sun. The commissioners of the French forests 

 require such timber to be cut in the old of the moon, and such 

 has been the standing regulation from the year 166 9. 



