Vegetation and Moonlight

Abstract

THE letter of your Trinidad correspondent, given in NATURE, vol. xxxvi. p. 586, referring to a Committee appointed to determine moon influence, has a practical interest for me. Among the wood-cutters in Cape Colony, both east and west, there is a fixed belief, which no arguments can turn, that to cut timber at, or shortly after, full moon, is to cut it when the sap is up; and when, consequently, it is out of season. The same belief prevails in various parts of Southern India, notably in Travancore. I have always combated the belief, pending time and opportunity to test it, indulging in the provisional hypothesis that the bush-workers' belief may be due to the fact that they can only work by night at or near full moon; and that at night trees should contain more sap than by day, when watery exhalation is active.