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Equinoctial   Listen
adjective
Equinoctial  adj.  
1.
Pertaining to an equinox, or the equinoxes, or to the time of equal day and night; as, the equinoctial line.
2.
Pertaining to the regions or climate of the equinoctial line or equator; in or near that line; as, equinoctial heat; an equinoctial sun.
3.
Pertaining to the time when the sun enters the equinoctial points; as, an equinoctial gale or storm, that is, one happening at or near the time of the equinox, in any part of the world.
Equinoctial colure (Astron.), the meridian passing through the equinoctial points.
Equinoctial line (Astron.), the celestial equator; so called because when the sun is on it, the nights and days are of equal length in all parts of the world. See Equator. "Thrice the equinoctial line He circled."
Equinoctial points (Astron.), the two points where the celestial and ecliptic intersect each other; the one being in the first point of Aries, the other in the first point of Libra.
Equinoctial time (Astron.) reckoned in any year from the instant when the mean sun is at the mean vernal equinoctial point.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Equinoctial" Quotes from Famous Books



... you'll be happy. Grow up in the way you are bent, and when you get old, you'll be there." It sees a gigantic future for the country. It sees the Polar sea running with warm water, the North Pole maintaining a magnificent perpendicularity, and the Equinoctial Line extended all around the earth, including Hoboken and Hull. It sees its millions of people happy in their golden (greenback and currency) prosperity, and also happy in a full supply of PUNCHINELLO to every family. It sees its favorite Bird of Freedom spread its wings from ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... spontaneous well-made pens, If Holland old and Holland new One wondrous sheet of paper grew, And could I sing but half the grace Of half a freckle in thy face, Each syllable I wrote would reach From Inverness to Bognor's beach, Each hair-stroke be a river Rhine, Each verse an equinoctial line!" ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... nothing should lessen the splendor of the cortege, or the brilliancy of the wonderful illuminations of that evening. "The star of the Emperor," said some one in the language of that period, "has borne him twice over equinoctial winds." ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... I remember one autumn when the equinoctial storm raged over England's sun my dragon ship was wrecked and I was tossed up on the rocks alone. Afterward everything grew calm. Oh, what long days and nights! Only the cloudless sky above and endlessly the deep ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... one balmy March morning, sauntering along the green uplands of Sillery, towards the city, while the "sun god" was pouring overhead, waves of soft, purple light. The day previous, one of our annual, equinoctial storms had careered over the country; first, wind and snow; then wind and sleet, the latter dissolving into icy tears, encircling captive Nature in thousands of weird, glossy crystals; every tree of the forest, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... shelving rock, and up there Colin was already busy with his skilled French cookery, preparing our evening meal. The woods still made a pompous show of leaves, but I knew it to be a hollow sham, a mask of foliage soon to be stripped off by equinoctial fury, a precarious stage-setting, ready to be blown down at the first gusts from the north. A forlorn bird here and there made a thin piping, as it flitted homelessly amid the bleached long grasses, and the frail ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... a stormy day," continued he. "The equinoctial gale blew violently, and scattered the yellow leaves of Liberty Tree all along the street. Mr. Oliver's wig was dripping with water-drops, and he probably looked haggard, disconsolate, and humbled to the earth. Beneath the tree, in Grandfather's chair,—our own venerable ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... greeted me through the open window were the songs of the birds, the sea-like diapason of the wind in the elm-trees on the lawn, and the animating song of the river in the glen. The weather during the whole of that autumn was extraordinarily fine. After a week of equinoctial storm in the end of September, the weather settled into exquisite repose. Day succeeded day, calm, bright, sunny. It was as warm as August, but with all the tonic freshness of autumn. November, usually a month of misery in London, was here delightful. The year died slowly, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... removing from thence to the capital in which Sir Magnus was reigning. It was as though you were to sojourn for three days at the park-gates before you were entertained at the mansion. Therefore they stayed at Boulogne, and Mrs. Mountjoy tried the bathing, cold as the water was with equinoctial gales, in order that there might be the appearance of a reason for her being at Boulogne. And for company's sake, in the hope of maintaining some fellowship with her mother, Florence bathed also. "Mamma, he has not written ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... storm prevailing, and the winds roared and the rain fell in torrents and the sea looked as if it had gone mad. Before the storm there was a report of a big battle, but no details of it had reached them. For the Pentland Firth had been in its worst equinoctial temper and the proviso added to all Orkney sailing notices, "weather permitting," had been in full force ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... cordially: "Old Hiems has but to withdraw for buds to burst. 'Jam ver egelidos refert tepores.' The equinoctial fury departs. I will leave you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... disposed to quarrel with this English climate, for all weathers are good to those who love the open air, and have their special attractions. What a pleasure it is to be out in rough weather in October when the equinoctial gales are on, "the wind Euroclydon," to listen to its roaring in the bending trees, to watch the dead leaves flying, the pestilence-stricken multitudes, yellow and black and red, whirled away in flight on flight before the volleying blast, and to hear and see and ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... the earls." Tyrone and Tyrconnel, with their families and many of their friends and retainers, nearly a hundred persons in all, made their escape in one vessel from the Irish shore, and for twenty-one days were at the mercy of the sea and of the equinoctial winds, for they sailed about the middle of September. A story characteristic of the faith which then filled the hearts of Irish chieftains is told. Tyrone fastened his golden crucifix to a string and drew it through the sea at the stern of the vessel, in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... to try the effect of her Cassandra presence on his fears;[393] but if he still delayed his marriage, it was probably neither because he was frightened by her denunciations, nor from alarm at the usual occurrence of an equinoctial storm. Many motives combined to dissuade him from further hesitation. Six years of trifling must have convinced him that by decisive action alone he could force the pope to a conclusion. He was growing old, and the exigencies of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... to be no more objects of interest to detain us at Pulo Nanas, and our chuliahs having already gone on to prepare dinner at Pulo Panjan, we rallied our forces and followed suit. It was already four o'clock, and so near the equinoctial line, where there is no twilight, it is dark soon after six; but then Pulo Panjan was on our route homeward, and we should have time at least to dine and gather some of the beautiful flowers for which the island is famous, as well as to taste the white pineapple, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... those fruitful and wealthy islands, which we do usually call Moluccas, continually haunted for gain, and daily travelled for riches therein growing. These islands, although they stand east from the meridian, distant almost half the length of the world, in extreme heat under the equinoctial line, possessed of infidels and barbarians, yet by our neighbours great abundance of wealth there is painfully sought in respect of the voyage dearly bought, and from thence dangerously brought home to us. Our neighbours I call the Portuguese, ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... to drowning people it would be no comfort that they were shipwrecked only by equinoctial gales. There! there! what do you think of that blast?" cried Rosamond; "is not there some ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... that Hawkins was again going out, and preparations had been made to receive him. Suspecting nothing, Hawkins with his four consorts sailed, as before, in October 1567. The start was ominous. He was caught and badly knocked about by an equinoctial in the Bay of Biscay. He lost his boats. The Jesus strained her timbers and leaked, and he so little liked the look of things that he even thought of turning back and giving up the expedition for the season. However, the weather ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... of Spitzbergen and in the Antarctic seas; that the sharks and seals of various kinds are found in equally innumerable tribes in seas the farthest apart in the two hemispheres; that the turtle and the tortoise inhabit indifferently the Atlantic, the Indian, and the great equinoctial oceans. ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... short in Maine; still the autumn that year seemed in no haste to begin its work. September came and went, bringing only trifling frosts, and the equinoctial week passed without a storm. In its place appeared an odd yellow mist, which wrapped the world in its folds and made the most familiar objects look strange and unnatural. Not a fog,—it was not dense enough for that. It seemed more like air made visible, thickened just a little, and tinted ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge

... that this was the beginning of the equinoctial gale. It might be a week before the storm would break. And where would the Wavecrest be ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... in the case of the two stars previously scrutinized, that the apparent difference of declination from the maximum positions was nearly proportional to the sun's distance from the equinoctial points; and he reallzed the necessity for more observations before any generalization could be attempted. For this purpose he repaired to the Rectory, Wanstead, then the residence of Mrs Pound, the widow of his uncle James Pound, with whom he had made many observations of the heavenly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... that no motion of the sea, caused by this earth revolving in the solar system, could bring about that end; for let us suppose the axis of the earth to be changed from the present poles, and placed in the equinoctial line, the consequence of this might, indeed, be the formation of a continent of land about each new pole, from whence the sea would run towards the new equator; but all the rest of the globe would remain an ocean. Some new points might be discovered, and others, which before appeared above the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... something greater; for he expects to go further on towards the east [again for west] from that place already occupied, constantly hugging the shore, until he shall be over against [or on the other side of] an island, by him called Cimpango, situated in the equinoctial region, where he thinks all the spices of the world and also the precious stones originate. And he says that in former times he was at Mecca, whither spices are brought by caravans from distant countries, and these [caravans] again say that they are brought to them from other ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... And comes off with the slightest fright. As to using a brush— My good dog! I beseech you, don't rush, Go quietly by me, if you please You're as bad as a breeze. I hope you'll attend to what we've said; And—whatever you do—don't touch my head, In this equinoctial, blustering weather You might knock it off ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... awakening, after all the nocturnal noise of the equinoctial storm, of the rain, of the groaning branches, twisted and broken, he perceived that a grand silence had come. Straining his ear, he could hear no longer the immense breath of the western wind, no longer the motion of all those ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... had a magnificent storm, which came, as an equinoctial storm should, exactly at the equinox, and for a day and a night heaped the sea upon the shore in thundering surges twenty and thirty feet high. I watched these at their awfulest, from the wide windows of a cottage that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... weather was generally fine, and the wind mostly from some western point; there were occasional showers, and the clouds in the eastern horizon resumed their threatening appearance, bringing some hard squalls, and rain from that quarter. In the middle of March (being the time when equinoctial gales are looked for in most parts of the world) there were two or three days of squally, unsettled weather, with rain, that seemed to terminate the season of the westerly monsoon. After the 1st of April, the weather was ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... the climate being fauourable, they inriched it by their own industry with the best wines and sugers in the world. (M351) The like maner of proceeding they vsed in the Isles of Acores by sowing therin great quantity of Woad. So dealt they in S. Thomas vnder the Equinoctial, and in Brasil and sundry other places. And if our men will follow their steps, by your wise direction I doubt not but that in due time they shall reape no lesse commodity and benefite. Moreouer there is none other likelihood but that her Maiesty, which hath ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... tableau is a representation of a scene which often transpired on board of vessels in passing the line. This time-honored custom of introducing to old Neptune and his suite the persons who, for the first time in their lives, cross the equinoctial line, is now nearly abolished. But until within a quarter of a century, the occasion of crossing the line was one of no little importance. It was a jubilee on board ship which was looked forward to with eagerness by the jolly tars who had already shaken hands ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... interpretations have been put upon the story of Beowulf (for argument of story, see texts). Thus Mllenhoff sees in Grendel the giant-god of the storm-tossed equinoctial sea, while Beowulf is the Scandinavian god Freyr, who in the spring drives back the sea and restores the land. Laistner finds the prototype of Grendel in the noxious exhalations that rise from the Frisian coast-marshes during the summer months; ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... hundreds of other animals to secure our little company from hunger, and even from thirst, at need. The beach was the home of numbers of galapagos—a kind of turtle so called from an archipelago in the equinoctial sea, where also they abound, and mentioned by Arthur Pym as supplying food to the islanders, It will be remembered that Pym and Peters found three of these galapagos in the native boat which carried them ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... Channel at full speed and at night were abreast of the Scilly lights, driving towards the Bay of Biscay in the teeth of an Equinoctial gale. At the behest of one girl eighty men had to endure the discomfort of a storm at sea, and a great steel ship, straining and quivering, was flung into the perilous night. It seemed a misuse of power that, at a woman's whim, so many lives and so noble and costly a ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... motions generated by the joint influence of the sun and moon; and by the rotatory and orbital course of the earth,—as developed in trade-winds, equinoctial gales, &c. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... a brace of days only in Boston, having as yet seen no one, and in despair and disgust at the storm. You, I think of in Lenox—which is a summer spot only to my memory; alas! with nothing summery now, I fancy, but your rage at the equinoctial. Does Mrs. Hawthorne yet remember that she sent me a golden key to the studio of Crawford, in Rome? I have neither forgotten that, nor any smallest token of her frequent courtesy in the Concord days. Such be our days ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... voyage we are now relating is distinguished, above all the rest, by the extent and importance of its discoveries. Besides several smaller islands in the Southern Pacific, he discovered, to the north of the equinoctial line, the group called the Sandwich Islands; which, from their situation and productions, bid fairer for becoming an object of consequence, in the system of European navigation, than any other discovery ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... entirely at his own expense. It was divided into five general parts: Zoology and Comparative Anatomy; Geography and the Distribution of Plants; Political Essays and Description of Peoples and Institutions in the Kingdom of New Spain; Astronomy and Magnetism; Equinoctial Vegetation. It took two years to issue the first volume, but the others then came along more rapidly, yet it was ten years before the last book of the set was published. The total expense of issuing this set of books was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... a great fame to be named with Moore; greater to be compared with him; greatest pleasure, at least, to be with him; and, surely, an odd coincidence, that we should be dining together while they were quarrelling about us beyond the equinoctial line. Well, the same evening, I met Lawrence the painter, and heard one of Lord Grey's daughters (a fine, tall, spirited-looking girl, with much of the patrician thorough-bred look of her father, which I dote upon) play on the harp, so modestly ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... John's orders were carefully observed. Denas got no more letters, and the summer weather became autumn weather; and then the leaves faded and began to fall, and the equinoctial storm set the seal of advancing winter on the cliff-breast. Yet through all these changes the clock ticked the monotonous days surely away, and one morning when Denas was standing alone in the cottage door a little lad slipped up and put a letter ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... of islands termed the Seychelles lie to the northward and eastward of Madagascar, in the latitude of 6 degrees south of the equinoctial. The tree, in its natural state, is found on three small, rocky, and mountainous islands only—Praslin, containing about 8000 acres; Curieuse, containing but 1000; and Round Island, smaller still; all three lying within a few hundred yards of each other. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... instructions to their commanders, that he was going to the Cape Verde islands, and thence, "in the name of the Sacred Trinity," intended to navigate to the south of those islands, until he should arrive under the equinoctial line, in the hope of being "guided by God to discover something which may be to His service, and to that of our Lords, the King and Queen, and to the honour of Christendom;" "for, I believe," he adds, "that no one ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... represents the well-known equinoctial sun-dial. It can easily be cast in lead. The spike points towards the elevated pole, and the rim of the disc is divided into 24 equal ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... stay made by Humboldt in equinoctial America, the impulse his explorations would doubtless otherwise have given to geographical science was strangely checked by the struggle of the Spanish colonies with the mother country. As soon, however, as the native governments attained ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... are those white phantasmagoria which, at the approach of equinoctial days, mark the coming of the winds. Over the rim of the sea a bright cloud gently pushes up its head. It rises; and others rise with it, to right and left—slowly at first; then more swiftly. All are brilliantly white and flocculent, like loose new cotton. Gradually they mount in enormous ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... of March, when an event occurred which would have been a more than nine days' wonder even in a busier spot than Tor Bay. The equinoctial gales had been protracted and severe. For days the sea off Fair Head, and through the strait that separates the mainland from Rathlin Island, had run mountains high; and now, though the surface was smooth and ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare

... ended, and one or two equinoctial gales had whipped the waters of Loch Beg into wild "white horses," yet still Lord Cairnforth did not return. At last, one Monday night, when Helen and her father were returning from a three days' absence at the "preachings'—that is, the half-yearly sacrament—in ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... religious marriage, it rained at Saint Cloud, but the weather in Paris was magnificent, so that nothing was lost of the magnificence of the procession or of the brilliancy of the illuminations. The Emperor's good fortune, it was said, had twice triumphed over the equinoctial storms. In the ever-flattering Moniteur it was said: "April 2 had been chosen for Their Majesties' entrance into the capital and the wedding rites. One strange circumstance aroused universal ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... we shall presently inspect. The foreshore is barred and dotted perpendicularly by black reefs and scattered diabolitos, or detached hard-heads, which break the surges. At spring-tides, when rise and fall reach at least ten feet, and fourteen in the equinoctial ebb and flow, it appears a gridiron of grim black stone. [Footnote: Not as the Hyd. Chart says—'rise and fall at springs ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... chiefly some trunkfish unique to the Red Sea, the sea of the East Indies, and that part of the ocean washing the coasts of equinoctial America. Like turtles, armadillos, sea urchins, and crustaceans, these fish are protected by armor plate that's neither chalky nor stony but actual bone. Sometimes this armor takes the shape of a solid ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... mass appears also to be confined to equinoctial countries, may be considered very limited in those parts of Terra Australis lying within the tropic recently explored. Ficus is the most considerable genus of the order in that continent; and although chiefly found on the north and north-western shores, is also traced on the East ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... affairs sorely afflicted her, and produced a kind of equinoctial agitation in the ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... procured. In this letter Ferrer assured Columbus that, according to his experience, the rarest objects of commerce, such as gold, precious stones, drugs, and spices, were chiefly to be found in the regions about the equinoctial line, where the inhabitants were black, or darkly colored, and that until the admiral should arrive among people of such complexions, he did not think he would find those articles in great abundance.—Navarrete, Coleccion, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... day. The gray clouds looked cold and dark, and the wind was blowing a gale as the stage left the little village of Lowton on its daily trip to the Summit. The weather prophets said it was the equinoctial, although it was ten days too early if the almanac was right; and every one predicted a storm, a northeaster that would set all the streams boiling, and probably carry away all the bridges between ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various

... weather, and the ship's general course—the repetition of which would be both useless and wearisome —continued through the month and until the vessel was near half the seas over. Fine warm weather and the "harvest-moon." The usual equinoctial ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... it's too late in the year for thunder. We shall have the equinoctial gales soon, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... publications, a book on the nature of basalt. His work in the administration of mines in the principalities of Bayreuth and Anspach furnished materials for a treatise on fossil flora; and in 1827, when he was residing in Paris, he gave to the world his "Voyage to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent," which embodies the results of his investigations in South America. Two years later he organised an expedition to Asiatic Russia, charging himself with all the scientific observations. But his principal ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... board to repeat the tale to his commander, and also to learn Castilian, that they might serve as interpreters. Without touching at any other port, Ruiz then sailed southward as far as Punta de Pasado, being the first European who, sailing in this direction, had crossed the equinoctial line, after which he returned to the place where he had ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... consider adjacent to Asia—as the Canarias and the Terceras [i.e., Azores] are to Africa; and Inglaterra [England], Escocia [Scotland], Hibernia, Irlanda, Olanda [Holland], Gelanda [Iceland], and the Oreadas [Orkney] Islands, to Europe. Some of the islands of this great archipelago cross the equinoctial line, or the torrid zone, and following the coast-line of Great China and India, terminate on the north side with the islands of Japon, which extend beyond the fortieth degree; in the south the archipelago has as yet no known termination. The Filipinas are between the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... praised his generosity and gave him grateful thanks, nor did I fail to present myself daily in his audience chamber, and for the rest of my time I amused myself in seeing all that was most worthy of attention in the city. The island of Serendib being situated on the equinoctial line, the days and nights there are of equal length. The chief city is placed at the end of a beautiful valley, formed by the highest mountain in the world, which is in the middle of the island. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... unhealthy as fertile. No preparations had been made to receive them; the majority died of disease and want; New France henceforth belonged to the English, and the great hopes which had been raised of replacing it in Equinoctial France, as Guiana was named, soon vanished never to return. An attempt made about the same epoch at St. Lucie was attended with the same result. The great ardor and the rare aptitude for distant enterprises which had so often manifested ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... COEL. Tropic, colures, the equinoctial, The zodiac, poles, and line ecliptical, The nadir, zenith, and anomalies, The azimuth and ephimerides, Stars, orbs, and planets, with their motions, The ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... disappeared. The river wound through a valley, which appeared like a huge garden. Apple-trees were there, which reminded one of Eve, and willows, which made one think of Galatea. It was, as I have said, in one of those equinoctial months when may be felt the peculiar charm of a season drawing to a close. If it be winter which is passing away, you hear the song of approaching spring; if it be summer which is vanishing, you see glimmering on the horizon the undefinable smile of autumn. The wind lulled and harmonized all ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... long as he could—the young shepherd quitted the party with great regret; but there was no time to lose, for he had two leagues to go, and there was no moon, and the roads were still broken into immense ruts by the equinoctial rains. On the following day, Hector returned to the Chateau d'Urtis through the meadow. When he arrived near the willow that served for his bridge across the river, he was surprised to see neither shepherdess nor flock in the field. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... Toothacre, that lives down by Middle Bay," said Miss Ruey, "used to tell about a dreadful blow they had once in time of the equinoctial storm; and what was remarkable, she insisted that she heard a baby cryin' out in the storm,—she heard it just as plain ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... 'Here's all his equinoctial lines, and his topics of Capricorn, and I don't know what besides,' Mrs. Martin continued, pointing to some charcoal scratches on the wall. 'I shall never rub 'em out; no, though 'tis such untidiness as I was never brought up to, I shall never ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... original outline. All rivers have altered their channels; many are altering them for ever.[16] Longitude and latitude might be assigned, at the most, if even those are not substantially defeated by the Miltonic "pushing askance" of the poles with regard to the equinoctial. But, finally, we remark, that whereas human nature has ever been prone to the superstition of local consecrations and personal idolatries, by means of memorial relics, apparently it is the usage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... not navigated the rivers of equinoctial America can scarcely conceive how, at every instant, without intermission, you may be tormented by insects flying in the air, and how the multitudes of these little animals may render vast regions almost uninhabitable. Whatever ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... to keep well under the circumstances. At last a day and night of peculiarly agonising depression were succeeded by physical illness; I took perforce to my bed. About this time the Indian summer closed, and the equinoctial storms began; and for nine dark and wet days, of which the hours rushed on all turbulent, deaf, dishevelled—bewildered with sounding hurricane—I lay in a strange fever of the nerves and blood. Sleep went quite away. I used to rise in the night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... northern hemisphere there is a star called Alpheratz and another called Zaph, which are in direct line with the polar star. The two first stars named are exactly on what is called the equinoctial line. But the southern hemisphere of the heavens does not have a polar star to indicate the south, so that if you will now look directly above us you will notice two very bright stars. One of them is the fixed star Sirius, the most brilliant in the heavens; ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... rain for days, in which so much can be done in the big up-stairs room with a cheerful fire, that is devoted to the rites and mysteries of scissors and needle. We were always glad, I remember, when our dress-making week fell in with the equinoctial. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... the interior. It was an enormous task; the garrison was starving; and the besiegers laughed in scorn at the slow progress of the puny insects who sought to rule the waves of the sea. But ever, as of old, Heaven aids those who help themselves. On the first and second of October a violent equinoctial gale rolled the ocean inland, and swept the fleet on the rising waters almost to the camp of the Spaniards. The next morning the garrison sallied out to attack their enemies, but the besiegers had fled in terror under cover of the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... cooly mildness brings us back, Now th' equinoctial heaven's rage and wrack Hushes at hest of Zephyr's bonny breeze. Far left (Catullus!) be the Phrygian leas And summery Nicaea's fertile downs: 5 Fly we to Asia's fame-illumined towns. Now lust my ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... soft spring with her early warmth returneth, Now doth Zephyrus, health benignly breathing, Still the boisterous equinoctial heaven. ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... expression 'central line' I can only meet by saying that, before Childe Harold left England, it was his full intention to traverse Persia, and return by India, which he could not have done without passing the equinoctial" (letter to Dallas, September 7, 1811; see, too, letter to his mother, October 7, 1808: Letters, 1898, i. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... half-wild cattle stored up by the Britons. Shortly after, Caesar returned to Gaul, having heard while in Britain of the death of his favourite daughter Julia, the wife of Pompey, his great rival. His camp at Richborough or Sandwich was far distant, the dreaded equinoctial gales were at hand, and Gaul, he knew, might at any moment of his absence start into a flame. His inglorious campaign had lasted just four months and a half—his first had been far shorter. As Caesar himself wrote to Cicero, our rude island was defended by stupendous ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... been glorious with golden leaves and golden sunshine, until the middle was more than past. Then came a September storm; an equinoctial, the people said; as furious as the preceding days had been gentle. Whirlwinds of tempest, and floods of rain; legions of clouds, rank after rank, bringing the winds in their folds; or did the winds ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... verdure, like the background of velvet whence the pile has been fretted away. Unexpected breezes broomed and rasped the smooth bay in evanescent patches of stippled shade, and, besides the small boats, the ponderous lighters used in shipping stone were hauled up the beach in anticipation of the equinoctial attack. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... successive stages marked by those twelve constellations which are still called the Signs of the Zodiac. In time even these observations were excelled, and it now appears certain that the Chaldaeans recognized the annual displacement of the equinoctial point upon the ecliptic, a discovery that is generally attributed to the Greek astronomers. But, like Hipparchus, they made faults of calculation in consequence of the defects ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... December. One inestimable advantage which should weigh with all navigators is that celery, scurvy-grass, fruits, and other anti-scorbutic vegetables abound. Such obstacles as we encountered, and which delayed us from the 17th of February till the 8th of April in the straits, were mainly due to the equinoctial season, a season which is invariably stormy, and which, more ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... Constituent and Legislative Assembly having been officially informed that your Excellency, after having freed the province of Bahia from the oppression of Portuguese troops, and having pursued them beyond the equinoctial line, led the squadron on your own judgment and responsibility to the port of the city of St. Louis of Maranhao, where, with your accustomed valour and singular good judgment, you dislodged the Portuguese troops, who had kept down the patriotism of its generous ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... weather, so incident to the equinoctial season, overtook us again before we reached the mouth of Green Bay, and kept us company until the night of our arrival upon the flats, about three miles below the settlement. Here the little steamer grounded "fast and hard." As almost every one ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... had begun with a thin drive, had now settled into one of those sod-soaking, autumn downpours, commonly called an equinoctial storm. Estabrook was showing the effect of his nervous strain by driving the machine through it with a recklessness of which I disapproved, not only because we had twice skidded like a curling-stone from one side of the asphalt to the other, but also because I did not ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... thought of leaving, for if she were going to stay any longer, they must provide themselves with winter clothing. They had reached the end of September; it rained nearly every day, the streets of the village were impassable, sitting on the shore out of the question, the equinoctial gales howled across the country from the tempestuous sea; all the world had gone home, and Wilhelm and Pilar were the last guests in the desolate hotel, spending most of the day in their room, where an inadequate fire spluttered ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... of no use to dispute about the Indian summer. I never found two people who could agree as to the time when it ought to be here, or upon a month and day when it should be decidedly too late to look for it. It keeps coming. After the equinoctial, which begins to be talked about with the first rains of September, and isn't done with till the sun has measured half a dozen degrees of south declination, all the pleasant weather is Indian summer—away on to Christmastide. ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... it began to be rainy, and the weather grew decidedly unpleasant. But our boarder bade us take courage. This was probably the "equinoctial," and when it was over there would be a delightful Indian summer, and ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... of Brazil, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In all there were twenty-five young men, full of frolic and fun, who made things rather lively about the ship. They went in for everything from which any fun could be extracted. At the equinoctial line they roped in the "greenhorns" to look through the field glasses at the line, and having fastened a hair across the field of view, of course, we could all see it plainly. Father Neptune came on board and those of the crew who had never crossed the Equator were hunted out of their hiding places, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... 9. The entertainment was highly enjoyed. 10. Why will people exaggerate so! 11. A somewhat dangerous pass had been reached quite unexpectedly. 12. We now travel still more rapidly. 13. Therefore he spoke excitedly. 14. You will undoubtedly be very cordially welcomed. 15. A furious equinoctial gale has just swept by. 16. The Hell Gate reef was ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... Serendib[Footnote: Geographers place it on this side of the line, in the first climate.] is situate just under the equinoctial line; so that the days and nights there are always twelve hours each, and the island is eighty[Footnote: The eastern geographers make a parasang longer than a French league.] parasangs in length, and as many in breadth. The ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... eleemosynary, elicit, elite, elucidate, embellish, embryonic, emendation, emissary, emission, emollient, empiric, empyreal, emulous, encomium, endue, enervate, enfilade, enigmatic, ennui, enunciate, environ, epicure, epigram, episode, epistolary, epitome, equestrian, equilibrium, equinoctial, equity, equivocate, eradicate, erosion, erotic, erudition, eruptive, eschew, esoteric, espousal, estrange, ethereal, eulogistic, euphonious, evanescent, evangelical, evict, exacerbate, excerpt, excommunicate, excoriate, excruciate, execrable, exegesis, exemplary, exhalation, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... war with Denmark; and, as they entered the Baltic, a British cruiser sent an officer to examine their papers. The same day they were boarded by a Danish officer, who ordered the ship to Christiansand. The captain thought it prudent to refuse, and to seek shelter from an equinoctial gale in the harbor of Flecknoe. The papers of the ship and Mr. Adams' commission were examined, and he afterwards went up to Christiansand, where he found thirty-eight American vessels, which had been brought in by privateers between the months of May and August, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... seen by those who care to see, let me take you, in imagination, to a shore where I was once at home, and for whose richness I can vouch, and choose our season and our day to start forth, on some glorious September or October morning, to see what last night's equinoctial gale has swept from the populous shallows of Torbay, and cast up, high and ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... in Adeline A calm patrician polish in the address, Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line Of anything ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... cardinal and equinoctial sign Libra, on the 23rd at 8 h. 24 min. evening, once more bringing our day and night to an equal length; when 8 deg. of Gemini are due east, and 4 deg. of Aquarius due south, all the planets having a direct motion, and being below the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various

... seems belittled by a rhyme— It needs the voice of nature. The sublime, Loud thunder crash, that hurts the startled ear, And stirs the heart with awe, akin to fear, The weird, wild winds of equinoctial time; These voices tell my love, ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... gloom seemed to gather around them, until even stout-hearted Jack shuddered a little as he surveyed the wide stretch of waters that had begun to tumble in the freshening wind, and thought what might happen if they could find no harbor, with a fierce late equinoctial gale sweeping across ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... rank of those for whom they were designed. The roofs were turned into arches of massive stone, joined by a cement that grew harder by time, and the building stood from century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and equinoctial hurricanes, ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson

... under the Equinoctial line; its night is still twelve hours and its day the like. Its length is fourscore parasangs and its breadth thirty, and it is a great island, stretching between a lofty mountain and a deep valley. This mountain is visible at a distance of three days' journey and therein ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... the birds' returning flight, The longer sunshine, and the shorter night, Arcturus' beams, and Corvus' glitt'ring rays, Diffuse a promise of the genial days. Yon muddy remnant of the winter snow Shrinks humbly in the equinoctial glow, Whilst in the fields precocious grass-blades peep Above the earth so lately wrapt in sleep. What sweet, elusive odor fills the soil, To rouse the farmer to his yearly toil! Though thick the clouds, and bare the maple bough, With what gay song he guides the cumbrous plough! In him there stirs, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... Harwich was short, though we had no longer any fear of not getting round to the Isle of Wight before the equinoctial gales commenced. We sailed early in the morning, papa being anxious to get across the mouth of the Thames, either as far as Ramsgate or Deal, to avoid the risk of being run down by vessels standing up or down the river ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... The 'kids' are two little stars which first rise in the evening towards the end of September, during the equinoctial gales. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... voyagers on board the Mukhbir, including the excellent engineer, Mr. David Duguid, we steamed out of the quiet cove, at a somewhat late hour (6.30 a.m.) on March 21st; and, dashing into the dark and slaty sea, stood to the south-east. For two days the equinoctial weather had been detestable, dark, cloudy, and so damp that the dry and the wet bulbs showed a difference of only 4—5. This morning, too, the fire of colour had suddenly gone out; and the heavens were ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... indicate the various points of the compass, and show and verify with precision the deviations and deflection of the needle from the pole. In this way it serves to give the longitude where one is sailing, on whatever parallel to the equinoctial. Likewise it shows the position of the stars, even when all their latitudes [i.e., altitudes?] and declinations are unknown, so easily that even the most uninstructed can in a short time learn it. It is of use in other curious, useful, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair

... solstice was over, and the sun gone back towards the equinoctial, when we considered of our next adventure, which was to go over the sea of Zanguebar, as the Portuguese call it, and to land, if possible, upon the ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... stars under the Northern than under the Southern pole. We say the elements of man are misery and happiness, as though he had an equal proportion of both, and the days of man vicissitudinary, as though he had as many good days as ill, and that he lived under a perpetual equinoctial, night and day equal, good and ill fortune in the same measure. But it is far from that; he drinks misery, and he tastes happiness; he mows misery, and he gleans happiness; he journeys in misery, he does but walk in happiness; and, which is worst, his misery is positive and dogmatical, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... a fixed and intellectual zodiac; and the movable and visible zodiac. According to the former, Aries still stands as the first of the signs; that is to say, the first thirty degrees of the zodiacal circle, reckoning from the equinoctial point in spring, are allotted to Aries in the intellectual zodiac.... Astronomers generally choose to reckon by the fixed ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... to draw out the fire from a volcano. For more than sixty years a veil had hung before men's minds, and it was as if they saw slaves as trees walking, in an unreal world. The sea captain fears a fog more than an equinoctial storm. When the mist falls, and obscures the glass, and the ship is surrounded with white darkness, and the surf is thundering on some Nantucket, as a graveyard of the sea, the captain longs for a cold, sharp wind out of ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... out in our galley as far as the Start, when the appearance of the weather became very threatening. It was just about the time of the equinoctial gales, and there was a consultation among us whether we should run into ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... arms a puppy or a kitten. Yet he is liable to excitement, in his way; for once, in some high debate, wherein he assisted as listener, when one old man on a wharf was doubting the assertion of another old man about a certain equinoctial gale, I saw my friend draw his right hand slowly and painfully from his pocket, and let it fall by his side. It was really one of the most emphatic gesticulations I ever saw, and tended obviously to quell the rising discord. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... fled, and at Midnight return'd From compassing the Earth, cautious of day, Since Uriel Regent of the Sun descri'd 60 His entrance, and forewarnd the Cherubim That kept thir watch; thence full of anguish driv'n, The space of seven continu'd Nights he rode With darkness, thrice the Equinoctial Line He circl'd, four times cross'd the Carr of Night From Pole to Pole, traversing each Colure; On the eighth return'd, and on the Coast averse From entrance or Cherubic Watch, by stealth Found unsuspected way. There was a place, Now not, though Sin, not Time, first ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... Ages, making a Maha Yug or Great Age. These were all equimultiples of the Cycle of the Neros 600, and of 2160, the twelfth part of the equinoctial precessional Cycle, and in all formed ten ages of ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... seen there above two spans in length. The inhabitants of this island are subject to the king of Narsinga, to whom they pay tribute. The climate is temperate and healthy, though situated so near the equinoctial line. The people are of a dark tawny colour, and wear slight cotton dresses, having the right arm bare, as is the universal custom of the Indians; the men being by no means warlike, neither have they the use of iron. In this island my companion ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... delay the summer calms were past. On as we drove, the equinoctial deep Ran mountains-high before the howling blast. We gazed with terror on the gloomy sleep Of them that perished in the whirlwind's sweep, Untaught that soon such anguish must ensue, Our hopes such harvest of affliction reap, That we the mercy of the waves should ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... one point they go downward to another. Also you have heard me say that Jerusalem is in the middle of the world; and that may be proved and shown there by a spear which is fixed in the earth at the hour of midday, when it is equinoctial, which gives no shadow on any side.' Ingenious, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... were reduced in different degrees of tribute and obedience by the effort or terror of his arms. He explored the Indian Ocean with a fleet of a thousand ships: they sailed in sixty-eight days, most probably to the Isle of Borneo, under the equinoctial line; and though they returned not without spoil or glory, the emperor was dissatisfied that the savage king had escaped ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... they were never so busy for his wants. Mrs. Willis's dainties were often untouched, and he would frequently sit for hours between slumber and waking, or mumble to himself as I read the prints. But about the time of the equinoctial a great gale came out of the south so strongly that the water rose in the river over the boat landing; and the roof was torn from one of the curing-sheds. The next morning dawned clear, and brittle, and blue. To my great surprise, Mr. Carvel sent for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of Guiana is directly east from Peru towards the sea, and lieth under the equinoctial line; and it hath more abundance of gold than any part of Peru, and as many or more great cities than ever Peru had when it flourished most. It is governed by the same laws, and the emperor and people ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh

... English sailed from the neighboring port of Baltschik on the 7th." It is admitted that "these delays hazarded not only the success, but even the practicability of the whole design, as between the 15th and 25th of September the great equinoctial gales sweep over the Black Sea, and lash it into tempests of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... rigour of the sea and weather. Some hold opinion that the Newfoundland might be the more subject to cold, by how much it lieth high and near unto the middle region. I grant that not in Newfoundland alone, but in Germany, Italy and Afric, even under the equinoctial line, the mountains are extreme cold, and seldom uncovered of snow, in their culm and highest tops, which cometh to pass by the same reason that they are extended towards the middle region: yet in the countries lying beneath them, it is found quite contrary. ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes

... their encampment, evidently in allusion to the cardinal points of the sphere, the equinoxes and solstices, when the equinox was in Taurus. (See Parkhurst's Lexicon.) These coincidences prove that this religious system had its origin before the bull ceased to be an equinoctial sign, and prove also, that the religion of Moses was originally the same in its secret mysteries as that of the Heathen, or, if my reader likes it better, that the Heathen secret mysteries were the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... family Piperaceae have a strong aromatic smell and a sharp burning taste. This small group of plants is confined to the hottest regions of the globe; being most abundant in tropical America and in the East Indian Archipelago, but more rare in the equinoctial regions of Africa. The common black pepper, P. nigrum, represents the usual property of the order, which is not confined to the fruit, but pervades, more or less, the whole plant. It is peculiar to the torrid zone of Asia, and appears to be indigenous ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... "Where the four circles, the horizon, the zodiac, the equator, and the equinoctial colure, join; the last threeintersecting each other so as to form three crosses, as may be ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... The Equinoctial storm, this spring, commenced on the 16th of March, and raged for three days with unusual violence. It was severely felt along the Atlantic coast, and did much damage to the shipping. Amin Bey, the Turkish ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... the seven planets. Jacob saw the Spirits of God ascending and descending on it; and above it the Deity Himself. The Mithraic Mysteries were celebrated in caves, where gates were marked at the four equinoctial and solstitial points of the zodiac; and the seven planetary spheres were represented, which souls needs must traverse in descending from the heaven of the fixed stars to the elements that envelop the earth; and seven gates were marked, one for each planet, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... sun rises from a point on the horizon, where the four great circles, namely, the horizon, the zodiac, theequator, and the equinoctial colure, meet, and, cutting each other, form three crosses. The sun is in the sign of Aries, "a better star," because the influence of this constellation was supposed to be benignant, and under it the earth reclothes itself. It was ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... be surprised at our setting forth that there are only eight. Remembering, however, that Eratosthenes of Cyrene, employing mathematical theories and geometrical methods, discovered from the course of the sun, the shadows cast by an equinoctial gnomon, and the inclination of the heaven that the circumference of the earth is two hundred and fifty-two thousand stadia, that is, thirty-one one million five hundred thousand paces, and observing that an eighth part ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... already emerged and gone seven hundred or eight hundred leagues; and if I had here an astrolabe to take the altitude of the pole, I could tell thee how many we have travelled, though either I know little, or we have already crossed or shall shortly cross the equinoctial line which parts the two opposite ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... are poor, there is a line of demarcation easy to be drawn, even in a democracy; but in Philadelphia, where there are so many in affluent circumstances, that line has been effaced, and they now seek an imaginary one, like the equinoctial, which none can be permitted to pass without going through the ceremonies of perfect ablution. This social contest, as may be supposed, is carried on among those who have no real pretensions; but there are many old and well-connected families in Philadelphia, whose claims are universally, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... that had ambushed in the lurid August skies and circled ominously round the horizon during the first weeks of September, broke at last in an equinoctial which was long remembered in the mill-house. It took its place in the family calendar of momentous dates with the hard winter of 1800, with the late frost that had coated the incipient apples with ice and frozen the new potatoes in the ground in the spring ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... important ocean currents may be explained by two causes: the flowing of the water from the polar seas to the equator (polar current), and the revolution of the earth about its axis (equinoctial current); besides which, there are the reflex currents produced by the horizontal form of the coast-lands. Thanks to these natural ocean highways, England is nearer to almost all the important mercantile coasts of the world by 300 geographical miles than the Eastern States of the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... same. They are talking of razing the admirable chapel of Vincennes, in order to make, with its stones, some fortification, which Daumesnil did not need, however. While the Palais Bourbon, that wretched edifice, is being repaired at great expense, gusts of wind and equinoctial storms are allowed to destroy the magnificent painted windows of the Sainte-Chapelle. For the last few days there has been a scaffolding on the tower of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie; and one of these mornings the pick will be laid to it. A mason has been found to build a little white house between ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... noise, he had better go where the anchors are forged in Portsmouth dockyard; if to see a mighty struggle of waters, he had better take a cruise, on board a pilot-boat, in the Bay of Biscay, during an equinoctial gale; but, if he be content to see the most glorious cataract his Maker has placed upon our globe; if, in a stupendous work of Nature, he have a soul to recognise the Almighty Workman; and if, while gazing thereon, he can travel from Nature up to Nature's ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... moon is above the horizon; and when the sun is in the southern signs, or during the autumnal and winter months, the greater tide is that, which arises when the moon is below the horizon: and as the sun approaches somewhat nearer the earth in winter than in summer, the greatest equinoctial tides are observed to be a little before the vernal equinox, and a little after the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... line. We can imagine that Stephano has pulled the leather jerkin or coat from the line. When he says under the line, he thinks of that as an expression sailors use when they are near the equinoctial line or equator, where the heat is intense, so strong as to take the hair or fur off the coat and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... out of them, except some bread and a few jars of water. These ships were set on fire. It was now resolved to bear away for the Gallapagos islands for refreshments, and accordingly anchored in York road, on the north side of the Duke of York's island, on the 9th January, 1720, immediately under the equinoctial line. They here found good water, scrubbed and cleaned their ship's bottom, and after ten days proceeded to the northwards, in order to cruize on the coast of Mexico. The circumstance of finding good water at this place, sufficiently ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... and devour such strangers caught amongst them as cannot pay a ransom. Lambri might be presumed a corruption of Jambi, but the circumstances related do not justify the analogy. It is said to produce camphor, which is not found to the southward of the equinoctial line; and also verzino, or red-wood (though I suspect benzuin to be the word intended), together with a plant which he names birci, supposed to be the bakam of the Arabs, or sappan wood of the eastern islands, the seeds of which he carried with him to Venice. In the mountainous parts were ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... April is still commemorated in Dryhope as one of unexampled spring storm, just as a certain October night of the next year stands yet as the standard of comparison for all equinoctial gales. The April storm, we hear, was very short and had several peculiar features. It arose out of a clear sky, blew up a snow-cloud which did no more than powder the hills, and then continued to blow furiously out of a clear sky. It was ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... tell you, 'less you would be pleased to hear 'bout what de cyclone did to my old missus and de old Sterling house. Somewhere 'bout 1880's one of them super knockshal (equinoctial) storms come 'long, commencin' over in Alabama or Georgia, crossed de Savannah River, sweep through South Carolina, layin' trees to de ground, cuttin' a path a quarter of a mile wide, as it traveled from west to east. Every house it tech, it carry de planks and shingles and ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... had a rough beginning, but many had promised to remember us in constant prayer. No small comfort was this; for we had scarcely left the Mersey when a violent equinoctial gale caught us, and for twelve days we were beating backwards and forwards in the Irish Channel, unable to get out to sea. The gale steadily increased, and after almost a week we lay to for a time; but drifting on a lee coast, we were compelled again to make ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor

... war-vessels and transports come forward, when Caesar put to sea with them (25 Dec. 707 of the uncorrected, about 8 Oct. of the Julian, calendar). The enemy's fleet, which on account of the prevailing equinoctial gales was drawn up on the beach at the island Aegimurus in front of the bay of Carthage, did not oppose the passage; but, the same storms scattered the fleet of Caesar in all directions, and, when he availed himself of the opportunity of landing not ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... woollen cloth would not be there in much request: wherefore we all agreed to go for Japan. Leaving, therefore, the coast of Chili, in lat. 36 deg. S. on the 27th November, 1599, we shaped our course direct for Japan, and passed the equinoctial line with a fair wind, which lasted several months. In our way we fell in with certain islands in lat. 16 deg. N. of which the inhabitants are canibals.[63] Coming near these islands, our pinnace, with eight men, ran from us, and were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... We crossed the equinoctial, with a fine fresh gale at N.E. on Friday, the 28th November, at four in the morning, being thus, by estimation, in long. 27 deg. 59' W. from London. In the morning of the 2d December, we saw a sail in the N.W. and made the Gloucester's ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... not last long. They came to an end with the big bazaar. The band ceased to play on the lawn, the pleasure boats ceased to ply up and down the Thames, the lovely Indian summer passed into duller weather, the equinoctial gales visited the land, and Ogilvie knew that he must brace himself for something he had long made up his mind to accomplish. He must pass out of this time of quiet into a time of storm. He had known from ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... to tell me—or his father. Then we could both have come with you—or explained to you that the tide rose early to-day. We heard it was to come early when you were out last night. They say," she went on, shaking her head, "if it had been an equinoctial tide, that neither of you would have escaped—there would have been no shadow of a hope for either—you would both have been drowned out there in ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie

... The equinoctial blow returned the next day, and the lake became really fine, in a new point of view; for, aided by the mountains, it succeeded in getting up a very respectable appearance of fury. The sail-boats vanished, and even ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... This equinoctial storm raged itself out during the night, and the first rays of the sun again brought us fine weather and a fair wind, which enabled us once more to quit the English harbour. In no situation are the vicissitudes so striking as those experienced at sea. The wind, which had ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... after the last summer guests had gone the equinoctial storms set in, and, if it was a bad year, they lasted on into November. First the chestnuts fell, then the tiles rattled down from the roof, and from the eaves-troughs, always placed with their outlets close by bedroom ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various



Words linked to "Equinoctial" :   equinoctial line, equinoctial year, equinoctial point, equinoctial storm, equinoctial circle, celestial equator



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