Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/351

 served to it by its impenetrability to the sun, from the thickness of the mountainous mass above it. Arid. even the light that comes into it through the portals has lost, by the way, all the force of those fiery particles to which it gives so great an activity. For, it is observed in India, as well as in all hot countries, that the exclusion of light is in some measure an exclusion of heat, and that but darkening an apartment only sensibly cools. This rule too admits of no exception, except in places where the soil and situation are of such a nature, as to continue the heat even after the actual presence of the sun is withdrawn; as in Gambroon on the coast of Persia, for example, where a high massive hill behind it, to which it is a kind of focal point, and the bituminous quality of the earth, are circumstances that do not

allow of the air's cooling between the sun-set and sun-rise.

But, asking pardon for this digression, and resuming my present subject, I am to observe that, for the rest, this island contains nothing more that is worthy of notice. There are not above two or three huts upon it; which is not surprising, considering the little land there is to cultivate, and that there is no water on it, but what is saved from the rains. The growth of the hill itself is only underwood, and grass, which in the dry season is often set en fire, and will continue burning for three or four days; which has this benefit, of fertilizing any cultivable spots on it, and of the salts being washed down by the rains into the lower grounds, a practice that is much followed in all those countries; which they call burning the land.

An Essay on the Quantity or Measure of English Verse. The Examples from Milton.

I. The measure of English Heroics, and of the Iaimbic.

II. The syllaba hypercatalectica, or redundant syllable,

III. Of the Trochee.

IV. Of the Spondee.

V. Of the Pyrrhic.

VI. Of very short Syllables.

VII. Of the Anapæst.

VIII. Of the Dactyle.

IX. Of Aphæresis.

X. Many like feet in the same verse.

XI. Many different feet in the same verse.

I. The measure of English Heroics, and of the Iambic.

he English Heroic verse is an Iambic of five feet, sometimes pure, as,

His ōnly̆ Son, on earth hĕ first bĕhēld

ăboūt him āll thĕ sānctĭtīes of heāv'n. I.