The days of our year do not follow, day after day alike, all the year round. We have winter frost and snow, and leafless trees; then, spring; after that, the bright hot summer; next autumn; and then winter again.

We have sunshine in winter as well as in summer, but the two are very different. The summer sun makes us so warm that we can hardly bear our clothes, but in winter we want warm wraps on the brightest day. The reason is, that, though the earth goes on her regular path, and does not go away from the sun, yet our country and others north of the equator are leaning away from him in the winter and towards him in the summer. We live in the northern half of the world, or the northern hemisphere; and this whole hemisphere gets far less sunshine in our winter than in our summer.

How can part of the earth be turned from the sun if the whole earth is not? That is another wonderful, beautiful arrangement God has made, so that nearly all the world, should be pleasant to live in. If the earth were to go round the sun with her axis upright, that is, standing up straight from pole to pole, the middle bulging part, where the equator is, would be always just opposite to the sun and would get too much heat. While we, who live a good deal to the north of the equator, should never get enough sunshine to ripen our corn and fruit. The sun's rays would fall straight down upon the equator, and would slope so much to reach us that we should get very little heat. You know it is much warmer in front of a kitchen fire, where the heat comes out straight, than it is in a corner which only slanting rays of heat can reach.

But the earth does not travel with its axis upright. It is always a sloping line; sloping, not toward the sun, but towards the path which the earth travels along; and therefore at one time our north pole is turned towards the sun, and at another time the south pole. Of course there is no real path, it is merely a way through space. But imagine it a real road for a moment, and you can think of the earth bowling along with her axis sloping towards the road.



Notebook Work:

1. Write the answers to the questions.

- a. What season is it where you live when the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun?

- b. What season is it where you live when the southern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun?

- c. Which seasons are where you live when the earth is neither tilted toward nor away from the sun?

2. Draw a picture of the sun and the (tilted) earth, showing the axis with a line, when it is winter where you live.

3. Draw a picture of the sun and the (tilted) earth, showing the axis with a line, when it is summer where you live.

4. Draw a picture of the sun and the (tilted) earth, showing the axis with a line, when it is spring or fall where you live.