Science: Starch and the Moon

Enchantress ever, the moon has from the first inspired ambiguous conjecture, leaving most men readier to impute to malevolence her obscure government of rhythms in nature than to find benign her whiteness, her remote hauteur. "She is wise," they said, "only to confound; her beauty maketh mad." Yet gardeners, and others whose work is in the earth, have stood to the defense of the cold lady of Heaven. They have declared that seeds sown in the moon's first quarter grow more quickly than those planted in the dark of the moon. They...

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