(M111) But the partisans of the ordinarily received opinion have sometimes supported it by another reason, which introduces us to the second of those fallacious appearances by which men have been led to regard the moon as the cause of growth in plants. From observing rightly that dew falls most thickly on cloudless nights, they inferred wrongly that it was caused by the moon, a theory which the poet Alcman expressed in mythical form by saying that dew was a daughter of Zeus and the moon.(363) Hence the ancients concluded that the moon is the great source of moisture, as the sun is the great source of heat.(364) And as the humid power of the moon was assumed to be greater when the planet was waxing than when it was waning, they thought that timber cut during the increase of the luminary would be saturated with moisture, whereas timber cut in the wane would be comparatively dry. Hence we are told that in antiquity carpenters would reject timber felled when the moon was growing or full, because they believed that such timber teemed with sap;(365) and in the Vosges at the present day people allege that wood cut at the new moon does not dry.(366) We have seen that the same reason is assigned for the same practice in Colombia.(367) In the Hebrides peasants give the same reason for cutting their peats when the moon is on the wane; “for they observe that if they are cut in the increase, they continue still moist and never burn clear, nor are they without smoke, but the contrary is daily observed of peats cut in the decrease.”(368)