eared to be aiming at; as in
the following well-known distich:--

"The great Dalhousie, he, the god of war,
_Lieutenant-colonel to the earl of Mar_."

An anticlimax can be intentionally employed only for a jocular or
satiric purpose. It frequently partakes of the nature of antithesis,
as--

"Die and endow a _college_ or a _cat_."

It is often difficult to distinguish between "anticlimax" and "bathos";
but the former is more decidedly a relative term. A whole speech may
never rise above the level of bathos; but a climax of greater or less
elevation is the necessary antecedent of an anticlimax.

ANTICOSTI, an island of the province of Quebec, Canada, situated in the
Gulf of St Lawrence, between 49 deg. and 50 deg. N., and between 61 deg.
40' and 64 deg. 30' W., with a length of 135 m. and a breadth of 30 m.
Population 250, consisting chiefly of the keepers of the numerous
lighthouses erected by the Canadian government. The coast is dangerous,
and the only two harbours, Ellis Bay and Fox Bay, are very indifferent.
Anticosti was sighted by Jacques Cartier in 1534, and named Assomption.
In 1763 it was ceded by France to Britain, and in 1774 became part of
Canada. Wild animals, especially bears, are numerous, but prior to 1896
the fish and game had been almost exterminated by indiscriminate
slaughter. In that year Anticosti and the shore fisheries were leased to
M. Menier, the French chocolate manufacturer, who converted the island
into a game preserve, and attempted to develop its resources of lumber,
peat and minerals.

See Logan, _Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress from its
Commencement to 1863_ (Montreal, 1863-1865); E. Billings, _Geological
Survey of Canada: Catalogue of the Silurian Fossils of Anticosti_
(Montreal, 1866); J. Schmitt, _Anticosti_ (Paris, 1904).

ANTICYCLONE (i.e. opposite to a cyclone), an atmospheric system in which
there is a descending movement of the air and a relative increase in
barometric pressure over the part of the earth's surface affected by it.
At the surface the air tends to flow outwards in all directions from the
central area of high pressure, and is deflected on account of the
earth's rotation (see FERREL'S LAW) so as to give a spiral movement in
the direction of the hands of a watch face upwards in the northern
hemisphere, against that direction in the southern hemisphere. Since the
air in an anticyclone is descending, it becomes warmed and