CHANGE OF SEASONS

Evening Star, Issue 23379, 23 September 1939, Page 22

CHANGE OF SEASONS

IKE SPRING EQUINOX OCCURRENCE TO-MORROW The spring equinox will occur this year to-morrow, on which day the sun will bo vertical over the equator, and day and night, expressed in apparent solar time, will be equal all over the world. For New Zealanders, ns for all other countries in the Southern Hemisphere, the equinox will mark the first day of spring, for the sun is steadily moving southward, daily rising higher in our skies and bringing greater warmth. The arbitrary selection of the September equinox as the first day of spring is, however, merely a calendar convenience. Perhaps in no part of the world does the arbitrary season so defined agree exactly with the meteorological season of the same name. In Now Zealand, for example, the meteorological seasons begin generally some two weeks prior to the calendar seasons, but they vary from year to year, and their exact commencement cannot he determined until much later. Thus the adjacent equinox becomes the official first day of spring in the minds of the people, if not in those of the meteorologists. The equinox, contrary to a widelyheld belief, does not always fall on the same date. Although generally referred to as falling on the twonty-fimt or twenty-second day of the month, it may fall later, occurring this year on the twenty-fourth. New Zealand time, and on the twenty-third in Greenwich time reckoning. It cannot, however, fall later than the twenty-fourth.