508 
The same word, and humming, are ap- 
plied to a bee. 
The noise of a large bdird’s wings in 
rising is well expressed by Pope (Wind-- 
sor Forest) i in the line, 
See, from the hale the whirring pheasant 
springs. 
The beat of a drwm is pretty com- 
monly agreed on. We have it in a mi- 
litary song in the Surrender of Ca- 
Jais : | 
Nothing to eat, 
+ Rub-a-dub-dub: 
~ Rub-a-dub-dub, 
We have nothing to eat. 
It is also in another song: 
Andour hearts beat the rub-a-dub feelings of 
j°F- 
Nothing further occurs to me at pre- 
sent on this highly important subject, 
except that I believe the sound of a 
hunling-horn is represented by tantivys 
— 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
HE Correspondent who subscribes 
S th himself Symphorus, in the 30ist 
page of your Jast month’s Magazine, 
imagines that he has fully acquitted Ovid 
upon the charge of inconsistency in his 
fable of Phaéton, whom he describes as 
having fallen into a river, ata time when 
there happened to be noriver wherein to 
fall.- Symphorus tells us, that by sup- 
posing ‘* the space uf at least one day 
occupied by Phaéton’s fall, the face of 
nature might then be ina ‘considerable 
degree renewed:” and because Homer 
has chosen tosmake Vulcan a whole day 
tumbling into the island of Lemnos; ergo, 
“every seemtmg incongruity is thus reo 
moved from the text of Ovid. it 
_ This, instead of a logical, or even a 
probable sSatbtapdi is one of the most 
unhappy conjectures ever jumped at. 
Had the critic foaked forward only a few 
jines into the text, he would have: found 
the poet describing the face of nature so 
far from ** renewed,” that the confla- 
gration during Phaéton’s descent is said 
to have supplied the loss \of the sun, 
_inerely by the light it occasioned. 
Symphorus seems co have forgotten 
that Eridanus,(or the Po) was expressly 
mentioned as scorched up, before-Phaé- 
ton was sal to be ‘precipitated: into it, 
Effects of Tron Nails, &c. oa Fruri-Trees. 
very essence of the blunder- 
[July H 
and this circumstance constitutes the 
Hesperiosque amnes, Rhenum,Rhodanumque, 
Papumque.” 
The lines which Symphorus has over- 
looked are, 
At pater obductos Juctu miserabilis | zgro 
Condiderat vuitus, et, si modo credimus, 
unum 
Isse diem sine sole ees ; ixcendia lumen 
Prabebant, aliquisque malo fuit usus in illo. 
Added to this, the sudden descent of 
the son of Phebus is compared with the 
motion of the meteor vulgarly termed a 
falling-star, and which finishes its jour- 
ney generally in less than twenty-four 
hours. rf 
x 
Volvitur j in praceps, longoque per aera tract 
Fertur: ut interdum de celo stella sereno, 
Quz si non cecid} potuit cecidisse videri. 
. ) Your’s, &e.’ 
Camden Town, SaMvuEL Wester, 
Jay 16, 1808. 
Lo the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
T often happens that some of the 
limbs of fruit-trees, trained against 
a wall, are blighted, and die; while others 
remain in a healthy and flourishing state, ~ 
This evil is, by gardeners, generally attri- 
buted to the effects of lightning, But if 
this were the case, would not the violent 
action of the electric fluid produce a lace- 
ration of the branch and stalk of the 
tree? » No such effect i is to be per ceived, 
It therefore appears to me that we must 
seek some other cause for this evil, and 
I flatter ‘inyseif, that I have discovered 
the real one. - 
A few years since, when, Galvanism 
was first. imtroduced to public notice, . 
constracted a pile, consisting. of about 
one hundred. plates of copper, and as 
many of zink, each about. two inches 
square. 3 Among other experiments, Lap- 
plied it to the dranch of a tender plant 
(a species of the ficoides), ‘Having left it 
for about an hour, on my return | found 
the branch withered, and hanging close 
to. the stalk. It immediately occurred 
to me that Galvanism might be: the cause. 
of the above-mentioned defect in wall 
fruit trees, occasioned. by the oxidation 
of the nails, by which they are oftentimes 
fastened (for I conceive Galvanism to 
be produced, in a greater or less degree, 
by every metal passing into a state of oxi- 
dation). Recollecting that the limb oh 
"heer 
