AINOS AIR. 



71 



is useful as a sea-mark. Excellent banks, well 

 slocked with fish, surround it. Ailsa Craig is cele- 

 brated in Scottish song, and has commanded the ad- 

 miration of several poets. Among the latest tributes 

 to it is the following splendid sonnet, by Jolm Keats: 



Hearken, tliou craggy ocean pyramid ! 



Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowls' screams, 



When were thy thunders mantled in huge streams? 



When from the sun was thy broad forehead hid? 



How long is't since the mighty Power bid 



Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams ? 



Sleep on the lap of thunder or sunbeams 



Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid ? 



Thou auswerest not, for thou art dead asleep ; 



Thy life is but two dread eternities ; 



The last in air, the former in the deep, 



First with the whales, 'last with the eagle skies : 



Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep ; 



Another cannot bow thy giant size ! 



AINOS, or Aixtrs ; the aborigines of Jesso and 

 Saghalin, commonly called wild Kuriles, and sup- 

 posed to be covered with hair in unnatural profusion. 

 They are nearly black, and resemble the Kamtscha- 

 dales, but have more regular features. The Chinese 

 and Japanese say that they have immense beards ; 

 captain Broughton, who anchored at Endermo har- 

 Iwur, in Jesso, in 1797, remarks, that the bodies of 

 the men are covered with long black hair ; and 

 Krusenstern, the Russian navigator, mentions that a 

 child of this description was seen in 1805, but that 

 the parents had no such characteristics, and he de- 

 nies that it is general. Other testimony, e. g. that 

 of the early missionaries at Japan, seems to confirm 

 this peculiarity of the A. The women are very ugly. 

 Tlie A. are of a mild, liberal disposition; their man- 

 ners, however, are very little known. Polygamy is 

 practised among them. Agriculture they know very 

 little of. They fatten bears for winter provision. 

 The A. were formerly independent, but are now in 

 subjection to the Japanese. 



AIXSWORTH, Dr Henry, an Englishman, who 

 distinguished himself, about 1590, among the Brown- 

 ists. His knowledge of Hebrew, and his annotations 

 on the Holy Scriptures, gained him much reputation. 

 He died about 1629, in Amsterdam. He is said to 

 have restored to a Jew a valuable diamond which 

 he had lost. The only compensation which he asked 

 was a conference with some Jewish rabbies on the 

 prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the 

 Messiah. The Jew promised to bring it about, but 

 failing of success, is said to have poisoned A. through 

 sliame and vexation. 



AINSWORTH, Robert, born at Wood-yale, in Lan- 

 cashire, 1660, was master of a boarding-school at 

 Bcthnal-Green, whence he removed to Hackney 

 and other places in the neighbourhood of London. 

 After acquiring a moderate fortune, he lived privately 

 till 1743, when he died. He compiled the well- 

 known Latin and English Dictionary, published in 

 1736; and in 1752, the fourth edition, under the care 

 of Dr Ward and William Younge, was enlarged to 

 2 vols. folio. Many editions with improvements 

 have followed. 



Aiou ; a group of 1 5 islands in the eastern seas, 

 off the N. coast of Waggiou, and surrounded by a 

 reef 50 miles in compass, -which is penetrated by a 

 deep channel on the north-west side. Aiou Baba 

 is the largest, about 5 miles in circuit, 500 feet 

 high, long. 128 25> E., laL 32' N. Fish, turtle, 

 and tropical fruits abound in these islands. They 

 have some trade with the Chinese. 



AIR, (Greek, aj ; Latin, tier), in natural philo- 

 sophy, is that fluid, transparent substance which 

 surrounds our globe, reaching to a considerable 

 height above its surface, perhaps 40 miles ; and this 

 ocean of air is the great laboratory in which most 

 of the actions of life go on, and on the composition 



of which they depend. Though invisible, except in 

 large masses, without smell or taste, yet it is a sub- 

 stance possessing all the principal attributes of mat- 

 ter ; it is impenetrable, ponderable, compressible, 

 dilatable, perfectly elastic, and its particles are 

 operated on like those of other bodies, by chemical 

 action. To prove the impenetrability of the air, a 

 very simple experiment is sufficient. Plunge a glass 

 receiver perpendicularly into water, after having put 

 under the receiver a piece of cork. However deep 

 you may plunge the vessel, the water never reaches 

 the top of it, though it diminishes the volume of the 

 air ; the liquid, therefore, cannot penetrate the air. 

 The cork serves to show how high the water rises. 

 In fact, the most common occurrences give constant 

 proofs of til* impenetrability of the air, and the 

 theory of sailing, of windmills, &c. is based on that 

 property of this fluid. (See Wind.) To prove that 

 the air is ponderable, it is only necessary to weigh a 

 large balloon, first empty, and afterwards filled with 

 air. It lias been found, that 100 cubic inches of 

 air, very dry, taken at the temperature of 60", and 

 under the barometrical pressure of 30 inches, weighs 

 30-5 grains ; and this weight is to that of water as 

 1 to 770. Galileo first discovered that air is ponder- 

 able, though several preceding philosophers seem to 

 have had some suspicion of the fact. (See Galileo, 

 Torricelli, Barometer.) In consequence of this 

 quality of air, the atmosphere which surrounds us 

 exerts a pressure on all points of the globe propor- 

 tionate to its weight ; this is the cause of the rise of 

 liquids in sucking-pumps, siphons, and the barome- 

 ter. To show this pressure, plunge the orifice of an 

 exhausted tube, closed at the other end, into a 

 liquid. The liquid, yielding to the pressure of the 

 external air, rises in the tube till the weight of its 

 column is equal to that of the atmospheric column. 

 In this experiment, water will rise 33 feet, and mer- 

 cury 29 inches, provided the place where the experi- 

 ment is tried is nearly on a level with the sea ; for 

 the height varies with the weight of the column of 

 air, which diminishes in proportion as we ascend 

 above the level of the sea. The height of the co- 

 lumn of mercury in the barometer, therefore, affords 

 a good means of determining the elevation of any 

 given place. The weight of the column of air, 

 which presses constantly on a man of middle stature, 

 is equal to 32,343^ pounds. But this weight does 

 no injury, because it is counterbalanced by the reac- 

 tion of the fluids, which fill the interior cavities of 

 the body. (See Air-pump.) That air is compres- 

 sible, and that the space which it occupies corre- 

 sponds always to the pressure on it, has been shown 

 by Mariotte. He took a bent glass tube, with legs 

 of unequal length, exactly graduated; after having 

 sealed the orifice of the shorter leg, he introduced a 

 small quantity of mercury, sufficient to rise to an 

 equal height in both legs. The air enclosed in the, 

 shorter leg then counterbalanced the atmospheric 

 column. By raising the mercury in the longer leg 

 to the height of 29 inches, the air in the shorter leg 

 was compressed into half the space which it occupied 

 at first. In other words, the weight of two atmos- 

 pheres (the column of mercury being equal to one) 

 compressed the air to this degree. Mariotte con- 

 tinued to pour mercury into the long leg, and found 

 that the weight of 2, 3, 4, c. atmospheres reduced 

 the air confined in the shorter leg to i, ^, ^,&c. of 

 its primitive volume. In repeating this experiment, 

 it is necessary to give time to the caloric which is 

 disengaged to pass off. It seems as if the compres- 

 sion of air would be indefinite, if we had sufficiently 

 powerful means ; but as yet we have only been able 

 to reduce its volume to one-eighth. (See Compres^ 

 sion, Air-gnn. The dilat ability of air consists in 



