JUNE DAYS. 
> Twas one of the charmed days, 
When the genius of God doth flow, 
The wind may alter twenty ways, 
A tempest cannot blow; 
It may blow north, it still is warm; 
Or south, it still is clear; 
Or east, it smells like a clover-farm; 
Or west, no thunder fear. 
— Emerson — Wood Notes. 
The charm of the June days is due, in no small part, 
to the obliquity of the ecliptic. The inclination of the 
earth’s axis at an angle of nearly twenty-three and a 
half degrees from the perpendicular to the plane of its 
orbit is a most important fact in mathematical geog- 
raphy, and yields as its result, when combined with 
the rotation of the earth on its axis and its revolution 
around the sun, that wonderful variety in the aspects of 
Nature which is the characteristic of life on the earth, 
‘especially in the Temperate Zones. The zones of 
climate are determined by it; the tropics and the polar 
