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gy were favorite pursuits with him. His collection which he brought from Europe was, perhaps, the first well-assorted cabinet imported into the U. States. He contributed papers to Cox's Medical Museum, relating to the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the extraction of the metal from the sulphuret of zinc, &c., and discovered the best mode of refining camphor. In 1818, he published, under the patronage of congress, his large work, entitled Statistical Annals, embracing Views of the Population, Commerce, Navigation, &c., of the United States of America, founded on Official Documents, commencing March 4, 1789, and ending April 20, 1818. In May, 1819, he went to Europe, travelled in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland and Ireland, and returned to the U. States, August, 1821. In October, 1824, he made a third voyage to Europe, by which a chronic disorder, supposed by the physicians in Paris to be an inflammatory affection of the pylorus, was much aggravated. He died at Paris, May 2, 1825. It having been his opinion that some of the unfortunate convicts, who are discharged from the Philadelphia penitentiary, after having undergone the penalty of the law, without having the means to procure a morsel of food or a night's lodging, might be prevented from the commission of further crimes, were they provided with a moderate sum of money, he therefore bequeathed $500 to the penitentiary, on condition that the citizens should make further contributions for that purpose before the expiration of six months; but no additions were made towards establishing said fund.

SHEE. In the article on him, it was erroneously stated that he died in 1830. He is at present president of the royal academy.

SHELDRAKES. (See Duck.
SHERIBON. (See Cheribon.,

SHIPPEN, William, was born in 1736, in Philadelphia, and was the son of an eminent physician. He graduated, in 1754, at the college of New Jersey. He delivered the valedictory oration at the commencement, when he took his bachelor's degree, and acquitted himself. so well, that the celebrated preacher Whitefield, who happened to be present, addressed him publicly, and, declaring that he had never heard better speaking, urged him to devote himself to the pulpit. His inclinations, however, led him to the study of medicine; and, after prosecuting it for three years, under the care of his father, he went to Europe, at the age of twenty

one. He continued his studies at London, paying particular attention to comparative anatomy, under the guidance of the famous John Hunter (in whose family he resided), and also to midwifery. He then went to Edinburgh, where he took his medical degree. In 1762, he returned to his native country. In the autumn of the same year, his first course of anatomy began. He gave three courses unconnected with any institution, when, in 1765, a medical school was established under the auspices of the college of Philadelphia, and he was chosen professor of anatomy and surgery. His anatomical lectures were regularly delivered until the winter of 1775, when they were suspended by the revolution. In 1776, he entered the medical department of the army, and, in 1781, resigned the post of director-general of that department, to which he had been a second time appointed. He had previously, in 1778, resumed his lectures. During ten or twelve years subsequently, he continued to practise, with great success, as an accoucheur, surgeon and physician; but the death of an only son, in 1798, affected him so much as to cause his almost entire abandonment of his duties as a practitioner and lecturer. He partially recovered his spirits, and delivered a course of lectures in 1807; but his health was greatly broken, and in July, 1808, he died at Germantown. As a lecturer, especially as a demonstrator of anatomy, doctor Shippen was highly distinguished; and as a physician he ranked with the first of the day.

SHUBEN ACADIE. (See Acadia.) SIDE-SADDLE FLOWER. (See Sarracenia.)

SIEYES died at Paris, Nov. 30, 1830, in the eighty-second year of his age. SIGLE. (See Abbreviations.) SINGAPURA. (See Sincapore.) SKYPETARS. (See Albania.)

SLIDE is the name given to an inclined plane for facilitating the descent of heavy bodies by the force of gravity. In general, they have been objects of no great importance; but one erected, some years since, at Alpnach, in Switzerland, excited great interest throughout Europe. For many ages, the craggy sides and the deep ravines of Pilatus, a lofty mountain near Lucerne, were thickly clothed with vast and impenetrable forests of spruce fir, of the largest size and the finest quality, surrounded on every side by the most terrific precipices, inaccessible to all but a few daring hunters, who, at the risk of their lives, scaled these precipitous

1

In a few minutes, the tree came thundering past the men, and plunged into the lake. The lowest board was then turned down, which was followed immediately by all the rest; and thus the workmen at the top were informed of the safe descent of the tree. The same operation was repeated during the rest of the day; and it was so arranged that a tree should descend every five or six minutes. When the progress of the tree was impeded by any obstacle, or when it started out of the trough, the board was only half depressed; and as the workmen knew by this signal that something was wrong, those who occupied the stations above and below the place where the tree had struck, came and assisted in removing the obstruction, which was generally occasioned by the springing of a beam in the trough. In order to prove the enormous force which the trees acquired by the rapidity of their descent, M. Rupp caused some of them to spring from the trough. The result was, that they penetrated the earth by their thickest ends to the depth of eighteen and sometimes twenty-four feet; and one of them having accidentally come in contact with another, cleft it from top to bottom, with the violence and rapidity of lightning. In order that none of the small wood might be lost, M. Rupp constructed several extensive manufactories in different parts of the forest, for the purpose of reducing it to charcoal. He also built magazines for preserving it when made. The trees, after having reached the lake, were made up into rafts, and floated down the Reuss, by the Aar, into the Rhine. By this rapid conveyance, they generally arrived at Basle a few days after they had left Lucerne. At Basle they passed out of the hands of the company. They were still floated down the Rhine in rafts to Holland; and thus performed a journey of about 4000 miles, in less than a month from the time they left Pilatus, until they arrived at the German ocean. We are sorry to add, that this stupendous work of art is now totally destroyed, and that almost every trace of it is obliterated on mount Pilatus. The great demand which formerly existed for the timber having entirely ceased, owing to political causes, the cutting and transporting of the timber was necessarily discontinued, and the slide was suffered to go to ruin. (See Playfair's Works, vol. 1, Appendix, No. 2, p. 89.)

SLOE. (See Plum.)

SMALLEY, John, doctor of divinity, an eminent Congregational clergyman of Connecticut, was born at Lebanon, in

that state, June 4, 1734. He took his degree at Yale college, in 1756, and, in 1758, was ordained pastor of the second society in Berlin, a situation which he retained until his death, June 1, 1820, in the eighty-sixth year of his age. In 1760, he published his Sermons on Natural and Moral Inability, which were soon after republished in England. A translation of them also was made, it is believed, in Germany. His other works are two Discourses on Universal Salvation; a Concio ad Clerum; an Election Sermon; and Sermons (in 2 vols., 8vo.).

SMALLWOOD, William, a governor of Maryland, served with great distinction in the revolutionary war. In 1776, he received the appointment of brigadiergeneral, and was present, with the brigade of Maryland troops under his command, at the battles on Long Island, near Camden, and at Germantown. In 1785, he was elected a delegate to congress, and, the same year, governor of the state. His death occurred in February, 1792.

SMEATON, John, an eminent civil engineer, was born May 28, 1724, at Austhorpe, near Leeds. The strength of his understanding and the originality of his genius appeared at an early age. His father was an attorney; and being desirous to bring up his son to the same profession, he carried him to London, in 1742, where he attended the courts in Westminster hall; but, after some time, finding that the law was not suited to his disposition, he wrote a strong memorial to his father on the subject, who immediately desired the young man to follow the bent of his inclination. In 1751, he began a course of experiments to try a machine of his own invention, to measure a ship's way at sea, and made two voyages, in company with doctor Knight, to try the effect of it, and also for the purpose of making experiments on a compass of his own construction, which was rendered magnetical by doctor Knight's artificial magnets. In 1753, he was elected a fellow of the royal society; and a number of papers which he published in their Transactions, show how highly he deserved the honor. In 1755, the Eddystone lighthouse was burnt down, and Mr. Smeaton being recommended to the proprietors of that building as an engineer in every way calculated to rebuild it, he undertook the work, which was completed in 1759, much to the satisfaction of the parties concerned. (See Light-House.) After this, Mr. Smeaton was employed on many works of great public utility. He made the river Calder navigable-a work

tnat 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 hey 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 in habitants, 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 shillings 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, pre ceded the eruption.

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 was 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. Doc tor 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 σnaw, 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 convulsions. 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 tonie spasms, the member remains rigid, as in locked jaw. (See Convulsion, and Tetanus.)

SPÁSMODIC CHOLERA. (See Cholera, in this Appendix.)

SPECTRES. (See Visions.)
SPHENE. (See Titanium.)

SPINNING FRAME. (See Cotton Manufacture.)

SPIRITS. (See Visions.)
SPIRITS, FAMILIAR.

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 deposited in such a situation that it might be transmitted to his friends in Europe, if desired, with the intention that it should