482 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



heat with great rapidity. This is the probable solution of some cases of physical injury 

 sustained by persons sleeping in the open air with the face exposed, commonly supposed 

 to be the effect of the moonlight. Messrs. Bennet and Tyerman, in their travels, state : 

 Lunar influence seems to occasion phenomena of a very curious nature. It is confi 

 dently affirmed, that it is not unusual for men on board a ship, while lying in the moon 

 light with their faces exposed to the beams, to have their muscles spasmodically distorted, 

 and their mouths drawn awry affections from which some have never recovered. 

 Others have been so injured in their sight, as to lose it for several months. Fish, when 

 taken from the sea-water, and hung up in the light of the moon during a night, have 

 acquired such deleterious qualities, that, when eaten the next day, the infected food has 

 produced violent sickness and excruciating pains. We have conversed with people who 

 have been themselves disordered after having partaken of such fish. It is hazardous to 

 touch on this subject ; we repeat what we heard from those who ought to be believed, and 

 who would not affirm that of which they were not themselves persuaded." Now the cir 

 cumstances under which these effects transpired a clear tropical moonlight night are 

 precisely those favourable to the production of dew, which promotes the putrefaction of 

 animal matter, and renders it deleterious ; and the injury sustained by the parties sleep 

 ing exposed to the moonbeams not a solitary example of such an occurrence was far 

 more probably caused by the cold and moisture produced by the immense radiation of 

 heat, consequent upon a cloudless night sky after a hot day, than by the lunar light, which 

 all scientific examination shows to be innocuous and uninfluential. 



Anacreon inhabiting the southern part of the north temperate zone in a well- 

 known ode pictures Cupid wet with the dews : 



" 'Twas midnight deep the glimmering Bear 

 Show'd near the pole his shaggy hair ; 

 And every heart, by toil oppress'd, 

 Enjoy'd the genial balm of rest ; 

 Secure from harm, my door was lock'd, 

 When Love approach'd, and loudly knock'd. 

 ' Who 's there ? ' I cried ' What vagrant foe 

 Thus wakes me with repeated blow ? ' 

 ' Fear not,' said he, with piteous din ; 

 ' Pray ope the door, and let me in ; 

 A poor unshelter'd boy am I, 

 For help who know not where to fly ; 

 Lost in the dark, and with the dews 

 All cold and wet that midnight brews.' " 



A bard, still more tropically situated than he of Teos, has written in a similar vein : 

 " I sleep, but my heart waketh ; it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, 

 Open to me ; for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of night." The 

 abundance of this deposition from the atmosphere in Palestine in certain specified lo 

 calities, chiefly the hilly districts is frequently alluded to in the sacred writings. " "We 

 were sufficiently instructed," says Maundrell, " by experience, what the Psalmist means 

 by the ' dew of Hermon,' our tents being as wet with it as if it had rained all night." 

 Its value is fully appreciated there, and throughout Western Asia, where it seldom rains 

 from April to September the season of the greatest heat the vegetation consequently 

 then mainly depending upon its copious supply. " God give thee of the dew of heaven" 

 a patriarchal blessing at the close of life illustrates its importance in the estimation 

 of a pastoral chieftain ; nor could the imagination conceive of a direr calamity than that 

 expressed in the Hebrew elegiac: "Ye mountains of Gilboa! let there be no dew, 

 neither let there be rain upon you !" 



