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The Tropic of Cancer and Planting of the Garden
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The Relation between the Tropic of Cancer
and the Planting of the Garden
by John W. Spencer
A portion of a letter to apprentice gardeners from
Uncle John, published as a supplement to the Home
Nature-Study Course Leaflet, for April-May, 1907.
A Story To Be Read to the Pupils
In years gone by, many farmers had a favorite phase of
the moon when they planted certain crops, usually
spoken of as the "dark" or the "light" of the moon. I
once knew a woman who picked her geese by the "sign of
the moon." Hogs were butchered in the "light" of the
moon, and then the pork would not "fry away" so much in
the skillet. It is true some pork from some hogs wastes
faster than that of others, but the difference is due
to the kind of food given the hogs. Many farmers hold
to those old superstitions yet, but the number is much
less now than twenty-five years ago. I wish I might
impress on you young agriculturists that the moon has
no influence on plant life, or pork, or geese, but the
position of the sun most decidedly has. We have some
plants that had best be planted when the sun's rays
strike the state of New York slantingly, which means in
early spring or late fall. We have other plants that
should not be put in the open ground until the rays of
the sun strike the state more direct blows, which means
the hotter weather of summer. If I were in close touch
with you pupils, I should be glad to tell some things
that happen to three young friends of mine, hoping that
thereby my statement might give the boys and girls an
interest in three geographical lines concerning the
tropics, and lead them to find their location on the
map, particularly when later they learn what happens to
my
three young friends, whom we will call by the following
names: There is one in Quito, Ecuador, of whom we will
speak as Equator Shem; the one on the Island of Cuba is
named Tropic of Cancer Ham; and the other in San Paulo,
Brazil, answers to the name of Tropic of Capricorn
Japhet.
What happens to these three boys, Shem, Ham and Japhet,
is this. At certain times of the year they have no
shadow when they go home for dinner at noon. This state
of affairs is no fault of theirs. It is not because
they are too thin to make shadows. It is due to the
position of the sun. If the boys should look for that
luminary at noon, they would find it as directly over
their heads as a plumb line. It is a case of direct or
straight blows from rays of the sun, and, oh, how
hot—hotter than any Fourth of July the oldest
inhabitant can remember! These three boys are not hit
squarely on the head on one and the same day. Each is
hit three months after the other. The first boy to be
hit this year in the above manner will be the Equator
Shem. The time will be during the last half of March.
Can any of my young friends in this grade tell me the
exact day of March that Equator Shem has no shadow? If
no one of you can answer that question at this time,
you had best talk it over with your friends, and bring
your answers tomorrow. It happens at a time when our
days are of about equal length.
Another thing about this particular day is that our
almanacs call it the first day of spring. All because
no boy or anything else has a shadow on the equator at
noon time. People and bluebirds and robins in the state
of New York will see squalls of snow about that time,
and there will be some freezing nights. But after the
first day of spring the cold storms do not last so
long, as was the case during December, January, and
early February, when the sun's rays hit us with very
glancing blows. Watch to see how much faster the sun
melts the snow on the last days of March than it did at
Christmas time. The light is also stronger and
brighter, and plants in greenhouses and our homes have
more life, and are not so shiftless, so to speak. Even
the hens feel the influence, for they begin to lay more
eggs and cackle, and down goes the price of eggs. Do
not forget to learn what day in March spring begins,
when the Equator boy finds it so hot that he would like
to take off his flesh, and sit in his bones. After a
few days, Equator Shem will find he again has a shadow
at noon. A short one it is true, but it will get longer
and longer each day. Now his shadow will be on the
south side of him. Is this a queer thing to happen? On
which side of you is your noon-time shadow? I will
give every one of you a red apple that finds it
anywhere but on the north side of him at twelve
o'clock. Every time the sun shines at noon, watch to
find your old uncle in the wrong, and thereby get the
apple. Each day that the shadow of Equator Shem becomes
longer and longer, the noon-day shadow of Tropic of
Cancer Ham, living on the Island of Cuba, will be
getting shorter and shorter, until at last there comes
a day during the last of June that he, too, will have
no shadow, and the almanac says that that day is the
beginning of summer.
Now it will be the turn of the Tropic of Cancer, Ham,
on the Island of Cuba, to say the weather is hotter
than two Fourths of July beat into one, and he too will
wish that he could take off his flesh, and sit in his
bones. Everybody in the state of New York will say that
the first summer day is the longest day of the year. It
is on this day that Equator Shem will have as long a
shadow as he ever had in his life. No United States boy
will ever be without a shadow at noon so long as he
remains in his own country. When the eight o'clock
curfew bell says it is time for boys and girls to go to
bed, it will yet be light enough to read the papers.
The sun not only sets late on that first summer day,
but it appears early next morning. What a beautiful
spectacle a sunrise in June is! Men of wealth will pay
thousands of dollars for pictures showing its glory,
yet I suppose that not one boy in five hundred ever saw
the beauty of the birth of a new day in the sixth month
of the year, and with no price of admission at that.
For only one day do the sun's rays fall directly on top
of the head of Tropic of Cancer Ham, who lives on the
Island of Cuba—just for one day, after which the up and
down rays travel back towards the Equator Shem. On the
twenty-first of September Shem again has no shadow at
noon, and the almanac makers say that is the last day
of summer, and tomorrow will be the first day of
autumn. Again it is very hot where Shem lives, but the
alligators and monkeys and the parrots do not seem to
mind it. Where do the up and down rays of the sun go
next? They keep going south, hunting for the boy named
Tropic of Capricorn Japhet, to warm him up, as was the
case with the boys in Cuba and at the Equator. The up
and down rays do not find the top of the head of the
lad in the City of San Paulo, Brazil until the last
part of December, just four days before Christmas, and
then the almanac says this is the beginning of winter,
and the shorter days of the year, when we in the state
of New York light the lamp at five o'clock in the
afternoon. Now, my boys and girls, do you understand
why we have a change of seasons? Do you understand that
the sun changes his manner of pitching his rays at us?
That in winter, when he is over the head of the Tropic
of Capricorn Japhet in San Paulo, and making summer on
that part of the earth, to us people in the north, in
the State of New York, he pitches only slanting rays
that do not hit us hard, and have but little power?
Thus you will see that the rays of the sun that strike
the earth direct blows, swing back and forth like a
pendulum, year after year, and century after century,
coming north as far as Tropic of Cancer Shem, but no
farther, and then swinging south as far as the boy
named Tropic of Capricorn Japhet, and no farther, just
stopping and swinging back again towards the north.
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