several well-known novels, Vivian Gray, the Young Duke, Contarini Fleming, and others. DOOMSDAY BOOK. (See Domesday Book.) DOORNICK. (See Tournay.) DORSET, EARL OF. (See Sackville, Charles, and Sackville, Thomas.) DOUBLE SPEEDER. (See Cotton Manufacture.) DRABANTS, OF TRABANTS. (See Guards.) DRAWING FRAME. (See Cotton Manufacture.) DREDGING is commonly applied to the operation of removing mud, silt, and other depositions, from the bottom of harbors, canals, rivers, docks, &c. The process of silting may be readily conceived, when it is considered that every rill of water carries with it a quantity, however minute, of earthy particles, and that these rills are so many tributaries to the brooks and rivulets falling into the great streams which form the drainage of the vast valleys through which they flow, finally carrying their waters to the sea. The beds of all large rivers, more particularly those which pass along comparatively flat or alluvial soils, are much encumbered in their channels by banks of sand and small gravel, while on their margins are found the finer or more minute depositions of silt and mud. Large streams, from the great body of water which they bring, and from the greater strength of their currents, will be always able to make a passage; but narrow and winding rivers, with slowly-flowing waters, are often materially injured by the depositions. To such a degree has this been experienced at Sandwich, in Kent, that that ancient seaport is left almost in the state of an inland town; and the port of Little Hampton, on the coast of Sussex, which was a harbor for the largest vessels two centuries since, at present admits only small colliers, and even those with difficulty, at high spring tides. The rivers of Holland, and those flowing through the plains of Italy, are, likewise, thus affected; and, according to the impurity of the waters, the entrances of docks and harbors, canals, basins, &c., are more or less silted up, and require to be cleansed or dredged. The late Mr. Rennie reported that 400,000 tons of mud were annually discharged into the Thames from the sewers of London. The innumerable shoals between the Nore and the Downs amply prove that this calculation is not exaggerated. The most simple mode of dredging, and probably the one 1 originally adopted for removing the inequalities from the bottom of rivers and harbors, is the spoon dredging-boat. An apparatus of this description was used for dredging the harbor of Leghorn so far back as 1690, the expense of which was fifteen paoli (about one dollar and seventy-five cents) the boat-load, of the size of a small river barge. But Cornelius Meyer, a Dutch engineer in the employ of Cosmo III, grand-duke of Tuscany, built, at Leghorn, a dredging-boat, after the fashion of those in common use in Holland at that period. The expense of the construction of this boat is stated to have been $105, and the cost of dredging a boat-load five paoli, being only one third of the Italian apparatus. The spoon dredging-boat has been long, and is, indeed, still used in Holland and Flanders, in deepening the extensive tracts of canals. The excavated matters are generally of a mossy description, which, being compressed in moulds and dried, are used as turf-fuel. On the Thames, this operation is conducted on a large scale, under the immediate direction of the Trinity board; and the stuff dredged from the bottom, consisting chiefly of gravel, is sold, at the rate of about one shilling a ton, for ballast, particularly to the colliers; and to such an extent is this process carried on, that the Ballast hills of Shields and Newcastle, which are curious from their great extent, have been chiefly raised by the discharge from the vessels which have brought gravel in ballast from the Thames. The spoon apparatus consists of a strong ring or hoop of malleable iron, about six or seven feet in circumference, properly formed for making an impres sion upon the soft and muddy ground. To this ring is strongly attached a large bag of bullock's hide or tanned leather, perforated with a number of small holes, with a capacity of four or five cubic feet. A long pole or handle is attached to the spoon, and a rope to the bottom of the bag, for directing their position at the commencement of each operation. The pole or handle varies in length and thickness, according to the depth of water, from fifteen to thirty feet. This apparatus is generally worked with a wheel and pinion or winch; and the chain or rope is brought from the spoon to the winch, through a block suspended from a small crane, for bearing the spoon and its contents to the side of the boat. The purchase-rope is led upon deck by a snatchblock in the proper direction for the barrel of the winch. In situations where the command of head-water is considerable, it is retained in a scouring basin, which is a water-tight compartment of a harbor furnished with sluices to run off the water as required. All harbors left dry every tide at low water, wherein the deposition of mud is most apt to take place, ought, if possible, to be furnished with a scouring basin. For clearing the bottom and bar of a harbor, in conjunction with that mode of dredging which simply loosens the stuff, the use of the scouring basin is most effectual. The harbor of Montrose is a striking instance in point, where the great natural basin connected with that port is covered every tide, by which, it has been computed, about fifty-five millions of cubic yards of back water are obtained, which produce so great a current that the shifting sand-bank off the coast, called the Annet, is prevented from being thrown across the mouth or entrance of that harbor, in gales of wind from the eastward; and the navigation is kept open and preserved of considerable depth, even at the lowest ebbs. The same remarks are applicable to the entrance of all great rivers, in which the navigation can only be preserved by a strong current of water. The most eminent engineers in Europe, in accordance with this idea, have introduced scouring basins into their designs of tide-harbors. Of these, the sluices at Ostend and Ramsgate harbors are particular examples, where the silt in the outer harbors is dredged and loosened, and raked into the tracks or courses of the water issuing from the scouring basins. To effect this, the dredging-harrow, consisting of a frame of timber and plate iron, is used; the common harrow, the ordinary plough, and even large rakes, have been employed with good effect in many places, particularly in Holland, upon the extensive flats at the entrance of some of the large rivers. In wet docks connected with each other, much use may be made of this mode of scouring or floating away mud by opening numerous sluices from one dock into another. This has been done at Liverpool, Leith and Bristol, with good effect. But in the improvement of navigable rivers, many of these modes of dredging and scouring have been laid aside, and the operation of narrowing the channel and confining the current has been adopted. By this system, the bed of the river Clyde has been deepened from five to nine feet, to the great advantage of the trade and commerce of Glasgow. In like manner the opening of the 38 VOL. XIII. Eau Brink Cut, a little above Lynn-Regis, has produced the most salutary effects in clearing away the obstructions in the river Ouse, below Ely; and the depositions in front of the town of Lynn will be scoured away so soon as a proper direction has been given to the current. The bucket dredging machine has been generally supposed to be of British origin; and it was certainly first used in England, by the late Mr. Rennie, at Hull. It is probable that steam was not applied to the bucket dredging apparatus prior to the commencement of the present century, nor brought into general use sooner than ten or twelve years after that period. At the present day, whenever a continued necessity exists for dredging, the steam apparatus is always employed. DSHAGATAI. (See Tartary.) DUN-FISH. (See Cod.) DUSE. (See Deuse.) DUTCH GOLD. (See Copper.) DUTCH LEAF. (See Divisibility.) DUTCH SCHOOL OF PAINTERS. Netherlandish School.) (See DUTCHMAN'S PIPE. (See Snakeroot.) DWARF ROSE BAY. (See Rhododendron Maximum.) DYKE. (See Dike.) DYSENTERY (dysenteria; from dus, difficulty, and ivreoa, the bowels); the flux. It is known by contagious fever; frequent griping stools; tenesmus; stools, chiefly mucous, sometimes mixed with blood, the natural fæces being retained or voided in small, compact, hard substances, known by the name of scybala; by loss of appetite, and nausea. It occurs chiefly in summer and autumn, and is often occasioned by much moisture succeeding quickly intense heat or great drought; whereby the perspiration is suddenly checked, and a determination made to the intestines. It is likewise occasioned by the use of unwholesome and putrid food, and by noxious exhalations and vapors; hence it appears often in armies encamped in the neighborhood of low, marshy grounds, and proves highly destructive; but the cause which most usually gives rise to it, is a specific contagion; and when it once makes its appearance, where numbers of people are collected together, it not unfrequently spreads with great rapidity. A peculiar disposition in the atmosphere seems often to predispose or give rise to the dysentery, in which case it prevails epidemically. It frequently occurs about the same time with autumnal intermittent and remittent fevers; and with these it is often complicated. The disease, howev er, is much more prevalent in warm climates than in cold ones; and, in the months of August, September and October, which is the rainy season of the year in the West Indies, it is very apt to break out, and to become very general among the negroes on the different plantations in the colonies. The body having been rendered irritable by the great heat of the summer, and being exposed suddenly to much moisture with open pores, the blood is thereby thrown from the exterior vessels upon the interior, so as to give rise to dysenteries. An attack of dysentery is sometimes preceded by loss of appetite, costiveness, flatulency, sickness at the stomach, and a slight vomiting, and comes on with chills, succeeded by heat in the skin, and frequency of the pulse. These symptoms are in general the forerunners of the griping and increased evacuations which afterwards occur. More or less fever usually attends, with the symptoms which have been described, throughout the whole of the disease, where it is inclined to terminate fatally; and is either of an inflammatory or putrid tendency. In other cases, the febrile state wholly disappears after a time, while the proper dysenteric symptoms probably will be of long continuance. Hence the distinction into acute and chronic dysentery. When the symptoms run high, produce great loss of strength, and are accompanied with a putrid tendency and a fetid and involuntary discharge, the disease often terminates fatally in the course of a few days; but when they are more moderate, it is often protracted to a considerable length of time, and so goes off at last by a gentle perspiration, diffused equally over the whole body; the fever, thirst and griping then ceasing, and the stools becoming of a natural color and consistence. When the disease is of long standing, and has become habitual, it seldom admits of an easy cure; and when it attacks a person laboring under an advanced stage of scurvy, or pulmonary consumption, or whose constitution has been much impaired by any other disorder, it is sure to prove fatal. It sometimes appears at the same time with autumnal intermittent and remittent fevers, as has been observed, and is then more complicated and difficult to remove. Upon opening the bodies of those who die of dysentery, the internal coat of the intestines (but more particularly of the colon and rectum) appears to be affected with inflammation, and its consequences, such as ulceration, gangrene and contractions. The peritoneum, and other coverings of the abdomen, seem likewise, in many instances, to be affected by inflammation. E. EBN-SINA. (See Avicenna.) ERBIL. (See Arbela.) ERYTHREAN SEA. (See Red Sea.) ESSEX, EARL OF. (See Cromwell, and Devereux.) ESSONITE. (See Garnet.) ETHICS. (See Moral Philosophy.) EVIL EYE. (See Fascination, in this Appendix.) EXHILARATING GAS. (See Nitrogen.) F. FALATAH. (See Foulah.) FASCINATION (Latin fascinare, which is derived from the Greek pakai [pace Kaw], to kill with a look); the power of charming or bewitching by the eyes, the looks. A belief in fascination appears to have been very generally prevalent in most ages and countries. For the proof of its existence in Greece and Rome, we may refer, among other passages, to the wish of Theocritus (vii, 126), that an old woman might be with him to avert this ill by spitting (40vedoira), or the complaint of Menalcas, in Virgil (Eclogue iii, 102), that some evil eye has fascinated his lambs (nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos). Pliny (Hist. Nat., i, 155) also speaks of persons among the Triballians and Illyrians, who, by their look, can bewitch (effascinent), and even kill, those whom they look steadily upon for a long time. The Romans had a god Fascinus, who was worshipped as the averter of fascinations, and the celebration of whose rites was intrusted to the vestal virgins. He was considered as the tutelary god of children and generals in particular; and his phallic attribute was suspended round the necks of the former and from the triumphal chariots of the latter. Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, has endeavored to show the physical cause from which the fatal effect of fascination may be supposed to arise, viz. a certain venom in the eyes of those possessing the power, which is emitted in beams to the person suffering under its effects; but Vairus, a Benedictine monk (De Fascino, 1589), treats natural fascination as visionary, and determines that all fascination is an evil power attained by a compact with the devil. (See Witchcraft.) The power of fascination is attributed, by these and other early writers, to several animals. Wolves, if they see a man, first deprive him of all power of speech-a fact which is alluded to by Virgil (Eclogue ix, 54). A beautiful application of this notion is to be found in Plato's Republic, where Socrates is represented as thus expressing himself concerning Thrasymachus: "When I heard him, I was astounded; and, had I not seen him before he looked upon me, I should have thought myself struck dumb." The shadow of a hyæna was said to produce the same effect upon a dog; and the former animal was supposed to be so well acquainted with its own virtue, that when it found a man or dog sleeping, it would first stretch its length by the side of the slumberer, and ascertain its comparative magnitude. If itself was the larger of the two, then it was able to afflict its prey with the madness; if otherwise, it would quietly steal away. There are various remedies against fascination prescribed, such as fumigations, sprinklings, necklaces of jacinth, sapphire or carbuncle, &c.; and the ancients imagined that a person, by spitting in his own bosom three times, could prevent its ill effects. Some instances of a modern belief in fascination may be found in Brand's Popular Antiquities (ii, 401). It has been, till very recently, and in some remote districts is even yet, prevalent among the Scotch Highlanders, and the inhabitants of the Western islands, where the fear of the evil eye has led to various precautions against its influence. In sir John Cam Hobhouse's Travels in the Turkish Empire, we find the following account of the existence of this superstition in the Turkish dominions, both among Mohammedans and Christians: "When the child is born, it is immediately laid in the cradle and loaded with amulets; and a small bit of soft mud, well steeped in a jar of water, properly prepared by previous charms, is stuck upon its forehead, to obviate the effects of the evil eye-a noxious fascination proceeding from the aspect of a personified, although invisible demon, and consequent upon the admiration of an incautious spectator. The evil eye is feared at all times, and supposed to affect persons of all ages, who, by their prosperity, may be the objects of envy. Not only a Greek, but a Turkish woman, on seeing a stranger look eagerly at her child, will spit in its face, and sometimes, if the look is directed at herself, in her own bosom ; but the use of garlic, or even of the word which signifies that herb (exodpov), is considered a sovereign preventive. Newbuilt houses, and the ornamented sterns of the Greek vessels, have long bunches of it depending from them, to intercept the fatal envy of any ill-disposed beholder. The ships of the Turks have the same appendages." The power of fascination, which has been attributed to some snakes (toads, hawks and cats have been invested with it also), forms a curious chapter in its history. The existence of this power has been very gravely asserted by scientific writers till a comparatively recent period; and, in fact, this vulgar error was first exploded by doctor Barton, in a paper printed in the fourth volume of the American philosophical society (Philadelphia, 1799). The manner in which the supposed fascinating power is exerted is thus described by doctor Barton (p. 76). "The snake, whatever its species may be, lying at the bottom of the tree or bush upon which the bird or squirrel sits, fixes its eyes upon the animal which it designs, to fascinate. No sooner is this done, than the unhappy animal is unable to make its escape. It now begins to utter a most piteous cry, which is well known, by those who hear it, to be the cry of a creature enchanted. If it is a squirrel, it runs up the tree for a short distance, comes down again, then runs up, and, lastly, comes lower down. 'On that occasion,' says a credulous, though honest writer (Kalm), it has been observed that the squirrel always goes down more than it goes up. The snake still continues at the root of the tree, with its eyes fixed on the squirrel, with which its attention is so entirely taken up, that a person approaching may make considerable noise without the snake's so much as turning about. The squirrel always comes lower, and, at last, leaps down to the snake, whose mouth is already wide open for its reception. The poor little animal then, with a piteous cry, runs into the snake's jaws, and is swallowed at once.'" Doctor Barton then combats the suppositions of Lacepède, that the effect thus described as produced, may be owing to an infectious vapor emanating from the body of the snake, or to the animal having been previously bitten by the reptile (which, Lacepède supposes, may also cause its cries, its agitation, and, finally, its falling down); and that of Blumenbach, that curiosity or fear, occasioned by the hissing and noise of the rattles, impels the animal affected to approach the cause of the noise; and endeavors to show that the notion that any such fascinating power is possessed by any animal, is entirely without foundation. We find, however, the following remarks on this subject, in a very recent work of high reputation (Griffith's translation of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, Reptilia): "It has been almost universally believed, that, by certain special emanations, by the fear which they inspire, or even by a sort of magnetic or magic power, the serpents can stupify and fascinate the prey which they are desirous to obtain. Pliny attributed this kind of asphyxia to a nauseous vapor proceeding from these animals-an opinion which seems to receive confirmation from the facility with which, by the assistance of smell alone, the negroes and native Indians can discover serpents in the savannahs of America." The writer then mentions the opinions of Lacepède and Kalm, and the fact that many travellers have reported in favor of fascination. He then proceeds thus: "But this fact, which is so interesting in animal physiology, is not only far from being clearly explained, but even far enough from being sufficiently demonstrated. Notwithstanding the ingenious conjectures of sir Hans Sloane on this subject; the observations of Kalm, whose assertions were implicitly received by Linnæus; those of Lawson, Catesby, Brickel, Colden, Beverly, Bancroft and Bartram; notwithstanding a work published, ex professo, on the matter, by doctor Barton, of Philadelphia; and notwithstanding some recent accounts, by major Garden, of the stupifying power of serpents, which he attributes both to the terror which they inspire and to certain narcotic emanations from their bodies at particular times,-it must be confessed that this subject is still liable to controversy, and still involved in a considerable degree of obscurity. On the other hand, as the look of the dog stops the progress of the partridge, so we might imagine that the presence of man has a considerable influence over the faculties of some very justly dreaded serpents, and obliges them to obedience by, as it were, a certain kind of fascination. From the most ancient times, certain hordes of Arabia, such as the Psylli and the Marsi, were acquainted with some art of charming and taming those reptiles. Kæmpfer, and many other travellers, have left us accounts of the dance which the Indians make the naia perform. We also know, beyond any doubt, that the Egyptian jugglers cause the asp of the ancients, the haje of the modern Arabs, to play a variety of tricks at the word of command, and that they seem to imitate the magicians of Pharaoh, who pretended to turn their rods into serpents. It is also a remarkable fact, that music has a very considerable influence on these animals, to which we cannot otherwise attribute any large portion of sensibility." FASTING; the partial or total abstinence of mankind and animals from the ordinary requisite supply of aliment, by which is to be understood that quantity which is adapted to preserve them in a healthy and vigorous condition. The principal instances of fasting, on record, are those which have arisen from shipwreck and similar accidents, from peculiar mental affections, or from the body being in a morbid state, or from the two latter combined. In a melancholy and well-authenticated instance of shipwreck, which occurred in the year 1795, seventy-two individuals were compelled to take shelter in the shrouds of the vessel, while the hull was covered by the sea, where all survived, during five days, without a morsel of food; but it appears that they were enabled to catch a few drops of rain as it fell, and some of them were drenched with the spray. A term of abstinence still longer is equally authenticated in the case of Thomas Travers, who, on Saturday, the fourth of December, 1784, entered a coal-pit 270 feet deep, the sides of which immediately fell in. The quantity of earth was so great, that six days were occupied in removing it; and no one could at first venture to penetrate the pit, on account of the foul air |