[222]. Ver. 87. Dom-Daniel—a submarine palace near Tunis, where Zatanai usually held his court.—Vide New Arabian Nights.
[223]. Ver. 88. Sulphur—A substance which, when cold, reflects the yellow rays, and is therefore said to be yellow. When raised to a temperature at which it attracts oxygene (a process usually called burning), it emits a blue flame. This may be beautifully exemplified, and at a moderate expense, by igniting those fasciculi of brimstone matches, frequently sold (so frequently, indeed, as to form one of the London cries) by women of an advanced age, in this metropolis. They will be found to yield an azure, or blue light.
[224]. Ver. 90. Caf—the Indian Caucasus.—Vide Bailly’s Lettres sur l’Atlantide, in which he proves that this was the native country of Gog and Magog (now resident in Guildhall), as well as of the Peris, or fairies, of the Asiatic romances.
[225]. Ver. 91. Judæa’s fabled king—Mr. Higgins does not mean to deny that Solomon was really king of Judæa. The epithet fabled applies to that empire over the Genii, which the retrospective generosity of the Arabian fabulists has bestowed upon this monarch.
[226]. Ver. 96. Young volcanoes—The genesis of burning mountains was never, till lately, well explained. Those with which we are best acquainted are certainly not viviparous; it is therefore probable, that there exists, in the centre of the earth, a considerable reservoir of their eggs, which, during the obstetrical convulsions of general earthquakes, produce new volcanoes.
[227]. Ver. 100. Far-extended heel—The personification of Rectangle, besides answering a poetical purpose, was necessary to illustrate Mr. Higgins’s philosophical opinions. The ancient mathematicians conceived that a cone was generated by the revolution of a triangle; but this, as our author justly observes, would be impossible, without supposing in the triangle that expansive nisus, discovered by Blumenbach, and improved by Darwin, which is peculiar to animated matter, and which alone explains the whole mystery of organization. Our enchanter sits on the ground, with his heels stretched out, his head erect, his wand (or hypothenuse) resting on the extremities of his feet and the tip of his nose (as is finely expressed in the engraving in the original work), and revolves upon his bottom with great velocity. His skin, by magical means, has acquired an indefinite power of expansion, as well as that of assimilating to itself all the azote of the air, which he decomposes by expiration from his lungs—an immense quantity, and which, in our present unimproved and uneconomical mode of breathing, is quite thrown away. By this simple process the transformation is very naturally accounted for.
[228]. Ver. 104. Phœnician Cone—It was under this shape that Venus was worshipped in Phœnicia. Mr. Higgins thinks it was the Venus Urania, or Celestial Venus; in allusion to which, the Phœnician grocers first introduced the practice of preserving sugar-loaves in blue or sky-coloured paper—he also believes that the conical form of the original grenadier’s cap was typical of the loves of Mars and Venus.
[229]. Ver. 107. Parabola—The curve described by projectiles of all sorts, as bombs, shuttlecocks, &c.
[230]. Ver. 115. Hyperbola—Not figuratively speaking, as in rhetoric, but mathematically; and therefore blue-eyed.
[231]. Ver. 122. Asymptotes—“Lines, which though they may approach still nearer together till they are nearer than the least assignable distance, yet being still produced infinitely, will never meet”.—Johnson’s Dictionary.