The fair city of Mexico.—Prescott.
The nation of Lilliput.—Swift.
(b) Noun and gerund, being equivalent to an infinitive.
In the vain hope of appeasing the savages.—Cooper.
Few people take the trouble of finding out what democracy really is.—Lowell.
(c) Two nouns, when the first is descriptive of the second.
This crampfish of a Socrates has so bewitched him.—Emerson
A sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building you may think it.—Lamb.
An inexhaustible bottle of a shop.—Aldrich.
(9) Of time. Besides the phrases of old, of late, of a sudden, etc., of is used in the sense of during.