THE AMMIL ON DARTMOOR. 389 
of the Plymouth Institution—one whose attainments were so vast, 
whose diligence was unexampled, whose patience never failed, and 
who with feeble health but firm resolve pushed on to the goal 
before him, and who has left a name never to be forgotten in 
the history.of Biblical criticism, but to be handed down with no 
less honour than the great ones of Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf, 
and Scrivener. , J. SBE 

THE AMMIL ON DARTMOOR.* 
s —_—— 
In January, 1868, towards the close of the day and in the course 
of the following night, a singular atmospheric formation took place 
on the Moor. Icicles, or rather coats of ice, appeared attached to 
and encircled every article exposed at the time to the open air. The 
weather was foggy, and the air unusually moist, with a degree of 
cold about freezing-point. 
A member of the writer’s family, who had walked from the 
Horrabridge Railway Station, and reached Archerton about dusk, 
was found, on entering the house, to have his clothes covered with 
minute specks of ice. When lght returned in the following 
morning, the trees, shrubs, and grass were seen to be covered with 
icicles of various forms and sizes, and it was quickly announced by 
the Dartmoor people that “the ammil was on.” 
This consisted of a formation of a body of ice, which encircled 
every projecting object exposed to the open air, every stem, spur, 
berry, and leaf of the trees and plants, and every blade and member 
of the grasses, down to their finest and most minute particles, each 
particular stem, leaf, leaflet, blade, or berry bearing its own sepa- 
* Mr. Shelly writes me to say, that ‘‘the name of the curious phenomenon 
you described last night is, I think, the old English amel/ (enamel). Pals- 
grave, in his French vocabulary (A.p. 1530), gives the verb, ‘I ammell, as a 
goldesmyth dothe his worke. Your broche is very well amelled. Vostre 
denise est fort bien esmaillée.’ Earlier than this we read of gold ‘amiled.’ 
Enamelling was, as you know, an art very much practised in England down 
to the sixteenth century; and it is curious to find this word ‘“amell’”’ 
surviving from the times when the work was very familiar, and used still by 
people to whom it is, of course, wholly unknown, and who employ the word 
in ignorance of its meaning.” 
