that required talents of the very first order, owing to the impetuous floods in that river; and planned and attended to the execution of the great canal in Scotland, for conveying the trade of the country either to the Atlantic or German ocean. Mr. Smeaton was appointed engineer to Ramsgate harbor, and brought it into a state of great utility by various operations, of which he published an account in 1791. He constructed a variety of mills, built a steam-engine at Austhorpe, and made a vast number of experiments with it to ascertain the power of Newcommen's engine (see Steam-Engine), which he improved and brought to a far greater degree of perfection, both in its construction and powers, than it had before. During many years of his life, he was a frequent attendant upon parliament, his opinion on various works, begun or projected, being continually called for. He died in 1792. He was fond of science for its own sake, and spent much of his leisure in the study of astronomy; for which purpose, he fitted up an observatory, in his house, furnished with curious contrivances of his own invention. He was a friend and encourager of merit wherever he discerned it; and many persons were indebted to him for important assistance on entrance into life. Mr. Smeaton was the institutor, in 1771, of a society of civil engineers, which was dissolved at his death, but afterwards renewed. They published, in 1797, a volume of his Reports. (For his labors in constructing bridges, mills, harbors, engines, &c., see his Reports, in 3 vols., 4to.) Of his inventions and improvements of philosophical instruments, an idea may be formed from the list of his writings, which is inserted in Hutton's Dictionary. SMEW. (See Merganser.) SOLWAY Moss; a tract of land in Cumberland, celebrated for an eruption of a very remarkable kind, which is thus described by Mr. Gilpin :-"Solway moss is a flat area about seven miles in circumference. The substance of it is a gross fluid, composed of mud and the putrid fibres of heath, diluted by internal springs, which arise in every part. The surface is a dry crust, covered with moss and rushes, offering a fair appearance over an unsound bottom, shaking with the least pressure. Cattle, by instinct, know and avoid it. Where rushes grow, the bottom is soundest. The adventurous passenger, therefore, who sometimes, in dry seasons, traverses this perilous waste, to save a few miles, picks his cautious way over the rushy tussocks as they appear before him. If his foot slips, or if he ventures to desert this mark of security, it is possible he may never more be heard of. On the south, Solway moss is bounded by a cultivated plain, which declines gently, through the space of a mile, to the river Esk. This plain is lower than the moss, being separated from it by a breastwork formed by digging peat, which makes an irregular, though perpendicular line of low, black boundary. It was the bursting of the moss through this peat breastwork, over the plains between it and the Esk, that occasioned the dreadful inundations that destroyed so large a district. The more remarkable circumstances relating to this calamitous event, were these: On the thirteenth of November, 1771, in a dark, tempestuous night, the inhabitants of the plain were alarmed with a dreadful crash, which they could no way account for: many of them were then in the fields, watching their cattle, lest the Esk, which was then rising violently in the storm, should carry them off. In the mean time, the enormous mass of fluid substance, which had burst from the moss, moved slowly on, spreading itself more and more as it got possess.on of the plain. Some of the inhabitants, through the terror of the night, could plainly discover it advancing like a moving hill. This was, in fact, the case; for the gush of mud carried before it, through the first two or three hundred yards of its course, a part of the breastwork, which, though low, was yet several feet in perpendicular height; but it soon deposited this solid mass, and became a heavy fluid. One house after another it spread round, filled, and crushed into ruins, just giving time to the terrified inhabitants to escape. Scarcely any thing was saved except their lives; nothing of their furniture, few of their cattle. Some people were even surprised in their beds, and had the additional distress of flying naked from the ruins. The morning light explained the cause of this amazing scene of terror, and showed the calamity in its full extent; and yet, among all the conjectures of that dreadful night, the mischief that really happened had never been supposed. Lands which, in the evening, would have let for twenty shil lings an acre, in the morning were not worth sixpence. On this well-cultivated plain, twenty-eight families had their dwellings and little farms, every one of which, except, perhaps, a few who lived *Three days' rain, of unusual violence, preceded the eruption. was near the skirts of it, had the world totally to begin again. Who could have imagined that a breast work which had stood for ages should at length give way? or that these subterraneous floods, which had been bedded in darkness since the memory of man, should ever have burst from their black abode? This dreadful inundation, though the first shock of it most tremendous, continued still spreading for many weeks, till it covered the whole plain, an area of 500 acres, and, like molten lead poured into a mould, filled all the hollows of it, lying, in some parts, thirty or forty feet deep, reducing the whole to one level surface." (Gilpin's Observations on the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland.)-In order to clear the arable and pasture land of this accumulation of moss, Mr. Wilson, from Yorkshire, adopted a very ingenious plan. He formed, in the higher grounds, two large reservoirs, which he filled with water, the whole force of which he directed against a large knoll in front of Netherby house, and afterwards against the accumulated masses, which he succeeded in washing away into the channel of the Esk. Doctor Graham, of Netherby, had sent for a person to survey the ground, and estimate the expense of removing the moss in the ordinary way. The estimate was £1300; but while the matter was under consideration, Wilson suggested that it might be done cheaper; and by the method which we have mentioned, he effected it for less than £20.-Another account of the eruption of this moss, by Mr. J. Walker, of Moffat, will be found in the Philosophical Transactions for 1772, vol. lxii, p. 123. According to Mr. Walker, the mossy ridge was reduced no less than twenty-five feet; but what is not easily explained, he makes the eruption take place on the sixteenth of December, 1772, whereas Gilpin places it on the thirteenth of November, 1771. Mr. Walker mentions the remarkable case of a cow, the only one, out of eight in the same byre, that was saved. It had stood sixty hours up to the neck in mud and water; and when it was taken out, it did not refuse to eat, but it would not taste water, nor even look at it, without manifest signs of horror. It was soon, however, reconciled to it, and was then likely to recover. SORBETTO. (See Sherbet.) SPANISH BLACK. (See Oak.) SPASM (from onaw, to draw); a cramp, or convulsion. An involuntary contraction of the muscular fibres, or that state of the contraction of muscles which is not spontaneously disposed to alternate with relaxation, is properly termed spasm. When the contractions alternate with relaxation, and are frequently and preternaturally repeated, they are called convul sions. Spasms are distinguished by authors into clonic and tonic spasms. In clonic spasms, which are the true convulsions, the contractions and relaxations are alternate, as in epilepsy; but in tonic spasms, the member remains rigid, as in locked jaw. (See Convulsion, and Tetanus.) SPÁSMODIC CHOLERA. (See Cholera, in this Appendix.) SPECTRES. (See Visions.) SPINNING FRAME. (See Cotton Manufacture.) SPIRITS. (See Visions.) Spirits.) (See Familiar SPURZHEIM, Gaspard. Since the publication of the eleventh volume, which contained an imperfect notice of this distinguished man, he has visited this country, and paid the great debt of nature in the midst of us. He arrived in the U. States in August, 1832, with the intention of remaining about two years in the country, lecturing in the principal towns, and visiting the different tribes of Indians within our territory. He began his lectures in Boston, where he delivered one course on the anatomy of the brain, designed principally for medical men. He had nearly, likewise, completed two popular courses of lectures on phrenology, one in Cambridge, and the other in Boston, when death interrupted his labors, Nov. 10, 1832. From the beginning of his popular course in Boston, the number of his hearers continually increased, and, towards the latter part of the time, had become so great that it was found necessary to change the room in which they were commenced for a larger hall. Doctor Spurzheim had, during his short residence in Boston, won the affection of a large number of his hearers, by the urbanity and gentleness of his manners, and the benevolence and enlarged philanthropy of his sentiments and disposition, while his elevated morality and scientific acquirements commanded the general respect. His funeral obsequies were, therefore, solemnized in one of the churches of that city; and a eulogy was pronounced over his remains by professor Follen, of Harvard university. His body, which had been embalmed, was depos ited in such a situation that it might be transmitted to his friends in Europe, if desired, with the intention that it should otherwise be permanently entombed at Mount Auburn, and that a monument should be erected over it at the public expense. The following works of doctor Spurzheim have been republished in Boston:-Phrenology, or the Doctrine of the Mental Phenomena (2 vols.); Outlines of Phrenology; Elementary Principles of Education; and Philosophical Catechism of the Natural Laws of Man. From doctor Follen's Funeral Oration (published in Boston, in 1832) we extract the following additional notices of doctor Spurzheim's life:-He was the son of a farmer, and received his classical education at the college of Treves, being destined, by his friends, for the profession of theology. In consequence of the war, in 1795, the students of that college were dispersed, and Spurzheim went to Vienna. Here he devoted himself to the study of medicine, and became the pupil, and afterwards the associate, of doctor Gall, who was at that time established as a physician at Vienna. (See our articles Gall, and Phrenology, in the body of the work.) It was here, in 1800, that Spurzheim first attended a private course which doctor Gall had repeated from time to time, during the four preceding years, in order to explain, to a select audience, his new theory of the organs and functions of the brain. The dissection of the brain itself still remained very imperfect until 1804, when Spurzheim became his associate, and undertook especially the anatomical department. From that time, in their public as well as in private demonstration of the brain, Spurzheim always made the dissections, and Gall explained them to the audience. The great interest excited by these lectures in Vienna, and throughout Germany, roused the fears of that inveterate enemy of all innovations, the government of Austria. An imper il decree, which prohibited all private lectures unless by special permission, silenced the two teachers, and induced them, in 1805, to quit Vienna. They travelled together through Germany, explaining and demonstrating their physiological discoveries in the principal universities and cities, particularly in Berlin, Dresden, Halle and Munich. Their anatomical demonstrations excited, every where, great interest and applause. The peculiar physiological doctrine on the organization of the brain being adapted to various innate qualities of the mind, found many opposers, but also some warm adherents, and gave rise to a great number of publications, in which the subject was discussed. In the year 1807, Gall and Spurzheim went to Paris, where they demonstrated their theory of the brain, in the presence of Cuvier, and before many other distinguished men. Cuvier, at first, expressed his approbation of the general features of the new doctrine, but, in a report to the institute on the subject, in 1808, spoke of it with less favor. In Paris, they published their great work on the Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System (1810), and continued to lecture and labor together till 1813, when Spurzheim went to England, and began to lecture in London. Mr. Abernethy acknowledged the superiority of his anatomical demonstration over the previous mode of dissecting the brain. After lecturing in several cities of England and Ireland, doctor Spurzheim went to Edinburgh, where he was particularly desirous of exhibiting his demonstrations and explaining his doctrines, in consequence of the appearance of an abusive article on phrenology, in the Edinburgh Review (June, 1815). During the three years which he spent in England, he published several of his works on phrenology, among which was one under the title of the Physiognomical System. In 1817, he returned to Paris, where he gave lectures on the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the brain, and also devoted himself to the practice of medicine; and, in 1821, became doctor of medicine of the university of Paris. In 1825, he again visited England, where he lectured to crowded audiences; and, in 1828, once more returned to Paris. There he again renewed his lectures; and he remained there till his visit to this country. not STARS, FIXED. (See Fixed Stars.) STEENWYCK. (See Stenwyck.) STIRRUP. The ancients were acquainted with the use of this convenient article of equestrian costume, the emperor Mauritius, who flourished towards the end of the sixth century, being the first writer who makes mention of it, in his Treatise on the Military Art. The Roman youth were accustomed to leap upon their horses sword or lance in hand. A jasper, explained by Winckelmann; a basso-rilievo, engraved by Roccheggiani; and the painting of a Greek vase, published in Millin's Recueil de Monumens, all exhibit warriors mounting on horseback by the help of a cramp-iron attached to the pike or lance. Distinguished persons and old men had servants to place them on their horses, and conquered sovereigns were often compelled to perform this office for their vanquishers. Caius Grac chus caused to be placed at certain distances along the high roads, after the example of the Greeks, large stones to assist the horsemen in mounting. STONE, John Hoskins, governor of Maryland, distinguished himself in the revolution. In early life, and at an early period of the war, he was first captain in the celebrated regiment of Smallwood. At the battles of Long Island, White Plains and Princeton, he behaved with great gallantry; and, at that of Germantown, he received a wound which disabled him for the residue of his life. But he still exerted himself in the service of his country, as a member of the executive council of Maryland, until 1794, when he was chosen governor, and remained so for three years (as long a time as was allowed by the constitution). He died at Annapolis, in 1804, leaving behind him the reputation of an honest and honorable man, an intrepid soldier, and a liberal, hospitable and friendly citizen. STRENGTH OF MATERIALS. [The following article is extracted from Arnott's Elements of Physics.] Strength depends on the magnitude, form and position of bodies, as well as on the degree of cohesion in the material.”—Of similar bodies the largest is proportionally the weakest. Suppose two blocks of stone left projecting from a rock that has been hewn, of which blocks one is twice as long, and deep, and broad, as the other. The larger one will by no means support as much more weight at its end than the other, as it is larger; and for two reasons: 1. In the larger, each particle of the surface of attachment, in helping to bear the weight of the block itself, has to support by its cohesion twice as many particles beyond it, in the double extent of projection, as a particle has to support in the shorter block; and, 2. both the additional substance, and any thing appended at the outer extremity of the larger, are acting with a double lever advantage to break it, that is, to destroy the cohesion. Hence, if any such projection be carried out very far, it will break off or fall by its own weight alone. What is thus true of a block supported at one end, is equally true of a block supported at both ends, and, indeed, of all masses, however supported, and of whatever forms. That a large body, therefore, may have proportionate strength to a smaller, it must be made still thicker and more clumsy than it is made longer; and, beyond a certain limit, no proportions whatever will keep it together, in opposition merely to the force of its own weight. This great truth limits the size and modifies the shape of most productions of nature and of art,-of hills, trees, animals, architectural or mechanical structures,&c. Hills. Very strong or cohesive material may form hills of sublime elevation, with very projecting cliffs and very lofty perpendicular precipices; and such are seen, accordingly, where the hard granite protrudes from the bowels of the earth, as in the Andes of America, the Alps of Europe, the Himalayas of Asia, and the Mountains of the Moon in Central Africa. But material of inferior strength exhibits more humble risings and more rounded surfaces. The gradation is so striking and constant from granite mountains down to those of chalk, or gravel, or sand, that the geologist can generally tell the substance of which a hill is composed by the peculiarities of its shape. Even in granite itself, which is the strongest of rocks, there is a limit to height and projection; and, if an instance of either, much more remarkable than now remains on earth, were by any chance to be produced again, the law which we are considering would prune the monstrosity. The grotesque figures of rocks and mountains seen in the paintings of the Chinese, or actually formed in miniature for their gardens, to express their notions of perfect sublimity and beauty, are caricatures of nature, for which originals can never have existed. Some of the smaller islands in the Eastern ocean, however, and some of the mountains of the chains seen in the voyage towards China, along the coasts of Borneo and Palawan, exhibit, perhaps, the very limits of possibility in singular shapes. In the moon, where the weight or gravity of bodies is less than on the earth, on account of her smaller size, mountains might be many times higher than on the earth; and observation proves that the lunar mountains are much higher than ours. By the action of winds, rains, currents and frost upon the mineral masses around us, there is unceasingly going on an undermining and wasting of supports, so that every now and then immense rocks, or almost hills, are torn by gravity from the station which they have held since the earth received its present form, and fall in obedience to the law now explained. The size of vegetables, of course, is obedient to the same law. We have no trees reaching a height of 300 feet, even when perfectly perpendicular, and sheltered in forests that have been unmolested from the beginning of time; and oblique or horizontal branches are kept within very narrow limits by the great strength required to support them. The truth that, to have proper strength, the breadth or diameter in bodies must increase more quickly than the length, is well illustrated by the contrast existing between the delicate and slender proportions of a young oak or elm, while yet in the seedsman's nursery, and its sturdy form when it has braved for centuries all the winds of heaven, and has become the monarch of the park or forest. Animals furnish other interesting illustrations of this law. How massive and clumsy are the limbs of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the heavy ox, compared with the slender forms of the stag, antelope and greybound! And an animal much larger than the elephant would fall to pieces from its own weight alone, unless its bones were made of much stronger materials. Many have questioned whether the mammoth, or antediluvian elephant, could have lived on dry land, or must have been amphibious, that its great body might generally be borne up by water. The whale is the largest of animals, but feels not its mighty weight because lying constantly in the liquid support of the ocean. A cat may fall with impunity where an elephant or ox would be dashed to pieces. The giants of the heathen mythology could not have existed upon this earth, for the reason which we are now considering; although on our moon, where, as already stated, weight is much less, such beings might be. In the planet Jupiter, again, which is many times larger than the earth, an ordinary man from hence would be carrying, in the simple weight of his body, a load sufficient to crush the limbs which supported him. The phrase a little compact man, points to the fact that such a one is stronger in proportion to his size than a taller man. The same law limits the height and breadth of architectural structures. In the houses of fourteen stories, which formerly stood under the castle of Edinburgh, there was danger of the superincumbent wall crushing the foundation. Roofs. Westminster hall approaches the limit of width that is possible without very inconvenient proportions or central supports; and the domes of the churches of St. Peter, in Rome, and St. Paul, in London, are in the same predicament. Arches of a Bridge. A stone arch much larger than those of the magnificent bridges in London, would be in danger of crushing and splintering its material. Ships. The ribs or timbers of a boat have scarcely a hundredth part of the bulk of the timbers of a ship ten times as long as the boat. A ship's yard of ninety feet contains, perhaps, twenty times as much wood as a yard of thirty feet, and, even then, is not so strong in proportion. If ten men may do the work of a three-hundred-ton ship, many more than three times that number will be required to manage a ship three times as large. Very large ships, such as the two built in Canada in the year 1825, which carried each nearly 10,000 tons, are weak from their size alone; and the loss of these two first specimens of gigantic magnitude will not encourage the building of others like them. The degree in which the strength of structures is dependent on the form and position of their parts, will be illustrated by considering the two cases of longitudinal and transverse compression; and the rule for giving strength will be found to be, to cause the force tending to destroy, to act, as equally as may be, on the whole resisting mass, at the same time, and with as little mechanical advantage as possible. In longitudinal compression, as produced by a body on the top of a pillar, the weight, while the support remains straight, can only destroy the support by crushing it in opposition to the repulsion and impenetrability of all its atoms. Hence a very small pillar, if kept perfectly straight, supports a very great weight; but a pillar originally crooked, or beginning to bend, resists with only part of its strength; for the whole weight above is supported on the atoms of the concave side only, which are therefore in greater danger of being overpressed and crushed, while those on the convex side, separated from their natural helpmates, are in the opposite danger of being torn asunder. The atoms near the centre, in such a case, are almost neutral, and might be absent without the strength of the pillar being much lessened. Long pillars or supports are weaker than short ones, because they are more easily bent; and they are more easily bent because a very inconsiderable, and therefore easily effected, yielding between each two of many atoms, makes a considerable bend in the whole; while in a very short pillar, there can be no bending without a great change in the relation of proximate atoms, and such as can be effected only by great force. The weight or force bending any pillar may be considered as acting at the end of a long lever, reaching from the end of the pillar to its centre, against the strength resisting at |