Identifier: sundialsrosesofy00earl (find matches)
Title: Sun dials and roses of yesterday; garden delights which are here displayed in every truth and are moreover regarded as emblems
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Earle, Alice Morse, 1851-1911
Subjects: Sundials Roses Rosicrucians
Publisher: New York London : Macmillan & co., ltd.
Contributing Library: Boston College Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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t is pic-tured opposite this page. The bronze Triton whichserved as a weather-vane has vanished, but eightsculptures remain. These bold flying figures repre-sent the winds, and under each was once a sun-dial.There was also a water-clock. As the tower wasforty feet in height and twenty-seven in diameter, itformed a striking object. Boreas, the North wind,blew on a conch-shell; the South wind poured rainfrom a water-jar; Zephyrus carried a mantle filledwith flowers. This Tower of the Winds is the oldest knownconstruction for observing the winds, but a similarpillar covered with copper was at Constantinople ;both of these towers had weather-vanes. For a timeit would seem that only important buildings, chieflychurches, carried vanes. In France in the twelfthcentury none but noblemen could have weather-vanes, and for a time no noblemen save those whohad planted their standards on some rampart at thestorming of a town or citadel. These vanes thenbore the knights arms. On the Bayeux Tapestry
Text Appearing After Image:
Tower of the Winds, Athens. Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 59 ships appear, and these have vanes on the masts.Anemoscopes, to show the duration of the wind, andanemometers, to measure its force, have been inventedin many shapes ; one resembled a wind-mill. Bothinstruments were in use in England in Queen Annestime. They were fixed in coffee-houses where mer-chants and ship-owners congregated, and where windsand weather formed a constant and natural topic ofconversation. It is probable that clocks may have been regardedwith suspicious eye by the distrustful and supersti-tious pedants of the day when they were first made.Everything unusual, and above all everything clever,was adjudged to be akin to witchcraft — until it wasproved not to be. The very first naming of a clock(so-asserted), in 1449, is by one Dr. Peacock, Bishopof Chichester, and he says : — In all Holie Scripture it is not expressid by biddingcounseiling or witnessing or by any ensaumbling of per-soon . . . that m

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