"IS THE EQUATOR MOVING NORTH?"

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3532, 2 November 1882, Page 2

"IS THE EQUATOR MOVING NORTH?"

[To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] Sir,—We have in this morning's Herald a curious paragraph with the above heading. Can any of your philosophical readers tell us what is meant ? We read " when the sun is in the zenith at noon (! as though it could possibly be there at any other time) the gnomen on the sun's dial casts a shadow shorter, &c." If the shadow of the point of the gnomen be not perpendicularly beneath it then the sun is not in tbe zenith. That there were eleven days taken from the old style year to reform the calendar is only what everyone knows, but if we are to remove the date of the (northern) summer solstice from the 21st to the 27th June we shall be "giving back" a greater part of those " eleven days." That there is a gradual "change in tbe inclination of the earth to the plane of its orbit" is well enough known. It happens, bowever, to be in the reverse direction to that indicated, tending in fact towards paralelism, and therefore to reduce, instead of increase, the extreme declination of the sun at the time of the solstices, and even if a change of direction in the axis of the earth took place it would not alter the mean place of the equator, but only its plane : it would cut the old one in two opposite points so ua to be as much more south on one side of the earth as north on tbe other. "Is the equator then moving north?" No. For if it was it ivould not be the equator. It would cease to be a great circle cutting the earth in two equal parts. —I am, &c,

Napier, November 1,1882