REVERSION. In Law, is when the possession RHEUM. A thin, serous humor, that oozes: of an estate, which was parted with for a time, re-occasionally from the glands about the throat and turns to the donor or his heirs. mouth.

RHEA. A large bird of the ostrich species, found in the plains of Patagonia, and incorrectly called the South American ostrich.

RHEUMATISM. Wandering pains in the body, accompanied with heaviness, difficulty of motion, and sometimes a fever.

RHETORIC. Rhetoric is generally considered RHINOCEROS. The rhinoceros is an animal as the art of persuasion. It attempts to produce which ranks next to the elephant, in point of size conviction concerning some particular object, that as well as strength; it is usually found to be about it may influence the will to a corresponding deter-twelve feet long from the tip of the nose to the inmination. It seeks either to arouse the mind to sertion of the tail; the same in circumference, and action, or to dissuade it from acting upon the reso- about seven in height; the legs not being near so lutions already taken, or such as are in contempla- long as those of the elephant. tion. Its immediate employment is not to search It is difficult to convey an accurate idea of this after truth, but to render acknowledged or suppos-extraordinary animal, from the singular appearance ed truths influential. It leaves to logic the prov-produced by the skin, which lies upon the body in ince of cool investigation, and of drawing legiti- large folds, and looks like different coverings of mate conclusions from admitted premises, without shell, of a dirty brown color, and so callous as to any regard to motives. The rhetorician is solicit-turn a cimeter's edge. From the snout there isous to effect some particular purpose, and calls in the art of reason merely as an auxiliary. He attempts to influence the will by reasoning with the affections; knowing that if they be gained over to the party espoused, the will is ready to follow. He, therefore, artfully conceals, or slightly passes over, every circumstance which is not favorable to his views, and brings forward and largely expatiates upon those which are. He suggests motives of pleasure, utility, safety, honor, pity, &c. as the subject admits. He not only presupposes the object in view of the first importance, but he employs every method to implant this conviction in the minds of those whom he endeavors to per-keeper, and seemed perfectly to understand the suade.

sues a curved horn, which sometimes grows near four feet in length, with which it is a match for the fiercest animals, though it is never the first to commence an attack; the form of the head resembles that of a hog; but the ears are larger, and stand erect; the eyes, though small, are bright and piercing; and the legs remarkably strong and thick.

Many fabulous accounts have been given of this animal, respecting its fierceness as well as strength. The one which was shown in London, in the year 1731, never was out of humor but when ill used, appeared both submissive and attached to his

meaning of his threats. The appetite of this animal, though very young when it left Bengal, was so astonishingly great, that it is said the expense of his food and passage amounted to near 4000 dollars.

When taken young, they are easily tamed; and the Asiatics frequently have them trained for the field: but they rather serve as marks of ostentation, than for any real advantage and use.

These attempts become most successful by a close imitation of that train of ideas, and those modes of expression, which any particular passion or affection is prone to suggest. If the design be to excite anger and resentment, rhetoric imitates The rhinoceros is a native of the deserts of Asia the language of anger. It places the supposed and Africa, and is generally found in forests where offence in the strongest point of view, and de- the lion and elephant reside. Like the hog, it is scribes it in the most vivid colors. It assiduously fond of wallowing in marshy places, and lives encollects and expatiates upon every circumstance tirely upon vegetable food; the horn is said to which contributes to the aggravation of the crime. possess great medicinal virtues, and the thickness It is indignant against that spiritless tranquillity of its skin defends it from every attack; but, if which can patiently endure such insults, and attri-provoked, it is superior to the elephant in strength. butes reluctance to revenge to mean and cowardly motives. If its object be to excite horror, it assembles together every circumstance which has a tendency to alarm with a sense of danger. It stigmatizes courage with the epithet of rashness, and flight is dignified with the title of prudence, &c. If compassion be the object, it expatiates upon the wretched state of the sufferer; his fears, his apprehensions, his penitence. It palliates his faults, extols his good qualities, and thus collects, RHOMBUS. In Geometry, an oblique-angled in one point of view, all his claims on commisera- parallelogram, or a quadrilateral figure, whose sides tion. The species of argument, which persons are equal and parallel, but the angles unequal, two under the influence of passions and strong affec-of the opposite ones being obtuse, and the other tions perpetually adopt, is rendered more effica-two acute. To find the area of a rhombus, upon cious by appropriate language. The rhetorician, the base, let fall the perpendicular, which is the therefore, studies and imitates, the particular lan-altitude of the figure; then multiply the base by guage of each passion, either in its energy, vivacity, the altitude, the product will be the area. or diffuseness. Hence he liberally employs all

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RHOMBOIDES. In Geometry, a quadrilateral figure, whose opposite sides and angles are equal, but is neither equilateral nor equiangular.

those tropes and figures of speech which nature RHUBARB. In Botany, a genus of the monosuggests, and art has classified. gynia order, belonging to the enneandria class of

plants. The different species are found in Thrace, Scythia, Arabia, Tartary, and China. It is used in medicine as a mild cathartic, and for an astringent quality, by which it strengthens the tone of the stomach and intestines. Rhubarb in substance operates more powerfully as a cathartic, than any of the preparations of that drug. Watery tinctures are more cathartic than the spirituous ones; and the spirituous contain, in greater perfection, the aromatic, astringent, and corroborating virtues. The dose, when intended as a cathartic, is from a scruple to a dram or more. The Turkey rhubarb is generally preferred to that brought from the East Indies; bnt, according to some, not always with reason. The latter is said to exceed the former in astringency.

Rhubarb is now cultivated in English gardens. RHUMB. A vertical circle of any place, or the intersection of part of such circle with the horizon.

RIADHIAT. In Modern History, a superstitious practice among the Mahometans, and chiefly among those of Hindoostan, which consists in shutting themselves up for fifteen days, without any other nourishment than bread and water, in a place where there is no light; during which time, the devout Mussulman incessantly repeats the word 'hou,' which denotes one of the attributes of God.

ploughed up; and an upright harrow, with a row of wooden pins in the lower end, is drawn lightly over it by a buffalo. The grain, which had previously been steeped in dung diluted with animal water is then sown very thickly on it. A thin sheet of water is immediately brought over it, either by channels leading to the spot from a source above it, or when below it by means of a chain pump, of which the use is as familiar as that of a hoe to every Chinese husbandman. In a few days the shoot appears above the water. In that interval, the remainder of the ground intended for cultivation, if stiff, is ploughed, the lumps broken by hoes, and the surface levelled by the harrow. As soon as the shoots have attained the height of six or seven inches, they are plucked up by the roots, the tops of the blades cut off, and each root is planted separately, sometimes in small furrows turned with the plough, and sometimes in holes made in rows by a drilling stick for that purpose. The roots are about six inches asunder. Water is brought over them a second time. For the convenience of irrigation, and to regulate its proportion, the rice fields are subdivided by narrow ridges of clay, into small enclosures. Through a channel, in each ridge, the water is conveyed at will to every subdivision of the field. As the rice approaches to maturity, the water by evaporation and absorption disappears entirely; and the ripe crop covers dry ground. The first crop or harvest, in the southern provinces particularly, happens towards the end of May or beginning of June.

RICE. This plant is cultivated in many parts of the East, in South Carolina in America, and also in Spain, Italy and Piedmont. It is a plant The instrument for reaping is a small sickle, that grows to the height of about two feet and a dentated like a saw, and crooked. Neither carts half, with a stalk not unlike that of wheat, but nor cattle are used to carry the sheaves off from fuller of joints, and with leaves resembling that of the spot where they are reaped; but they are the leek. It branches out into several stems, at placed regularly in frames, two of which, suspendthe top of which the grain grows in clusters, and ed at the extremities of a bamboo pole, are carried each of them is terminated with an ear or beard, across the shoulders of a man, to the place intendand enclosed in a yellow rough husk. When ed for disengaging the grain from the stems which stripped of this, they appear to be of an oval shape, had supported it. This operation is performed, of a shining white color, and almost transparent. not only by a flail, as is customary in America, or The following is the Chinese method of culti-by cattle treading the corn in the manner of Orivating it:- Much of the low grounds in the mid-entalists, but sometimes also by striking it against dle and southern provinces of the empire is appro-a plank set upon its edge, or beating it against the priated to the culture of this grain. It constitutes, side of a large tub scolloped for that purpose; the in fact, the principal part of the food of the inhab-back and sides being much higher than the front itants. A great portion of the surface of the coun-to prevent the grain from being dispersed. After try is well adapted for the production of rice, being winnowed, it is carried to the granary. To which, from the time the seed is committed to the remove the skin or husk of rice, a large strong soil till the plant approaches to maturity, requires earthen vessel, or hollow stone, in form somewhat to be immersed in a sheet of water. Many and like that which is used elsewhere for fikering great rivers run through the several provinces of water, is fixed firmly in the ground; and the grain China: the low grounds bordering on those rivers placed in it is struck with a conical stone fixed to are annually inundated, by which means a rich the extremity of a lever, and cleared, sometimes mud or mucilage is brought upon their surface indeed imperfectly, from the husk. The stone is that fertilizes the soil. The periodical rains which worked frequently by a person treading upon the fall near the sources of the Yellow and the Kiang end of the lever. The same object is attained also Rivers, not very far distant from those of the by passing the grain between two flat stones of a Ganges and the Burumpooter, among the moun- circular form, the upper of which turns round tains bounding India to the north, and China to upon the other, but at such a distance from it as the west, often swell those rivers to a prodigious not to break the intermediate grain. The operaheight, though not a drop of rain should have tion is performed on a large scale in mills turned fallen on the plains through which they afterwards by water; the axis of the wheel carrying several flow. After the mud has lain some days upon the plains in China, preparations are made for planting them with rice. For this purpose a small spot of ground is enclosed by a bank of clay; the earth is

arms, which, by striking upon the ends of levers, raise them in the same manner as is done by treading on them. Sometimes twenty of these levers are worked at once. The straw from which

the grain has been disengaged is cut chiefly into chaff, to serve as provender for the very few cattle employed in Chinese husbandry. The labor of the first crop being finished, the ground is immediately prepared for the reception of fresh seeds. The first operation undertaken is that of pulling up the stubble, collecting it into small heaps, which are burnt, and the ashes scattered upon the field. The former processes are afterwards renewed. The second crop is generally ripe late in October or early in November. The grain is treated as before but the stubble is no longer burnt. It is turned under with the plough, and left to putrefy in the earth. This, with the slime brought upon the ground by inundation, is the only manure employed in the culture of rice.'

and the fontanelle, and even the sutures of the skull, are more open than is usual in children of the same age. The head continuing to increase in size, the forehead especially; becomes unusually prominent, and the neck appears very slender in proportion to the head. The progress of dentition is also slow, or much later than usual; and those teeth which protrude themselves soon become black, decay, and often fall out. The ribs lose their convexity, and become flattened at their sides, while the sternum, or breast-bone, is pushed forward, so as to form a sort of ridge. At the same time, or sometimes sooner, the epiphyses at the several joints of the limbs become swelled, while the limbs between the joints appear, or perhaps actually become, more slender. The bones now are obviously every where, to a certain degree, flexible, becoming variously bent and distorted, and especially the legs and the spine of the back are incurvated in various directions. If the child

the commencement of the disease, it becomes daily more feeble in its motions, and more averse to excrtion, and at length loses the power of walking altogether.

RICKETS. In Medicine, a disease affecting children, and principally characterized by enlargement and flexure, or distortion of the bones. The origin and etymology of this word are equally un-had already acquired the power of walking before known. It has occurred in this, as in several other instances, that the vulgar had recognised and given a name to the disease, before medical men had discriminated its nature, or at least had taken the pains to point out its peculiarities by any written document. The first account of the disease is that of Dr. Glisson, published in the year 1650, which was the result of some communications on the subject in a private medical society. In this treatise we are informed, that the rickets had first been notieed in the counties of Dorset and Somerset, about thirty years before, where it was vulgarly known by this name, and that it spread from thence over all the southern aud western parts of the kingdom, but was not yet commonly known in the north. The rapidity of its progress, and the extent and fatality of its prevalence, are scarcely less extraor-to ride so as the wind has equal force over her one dinary than its general and speedy disappearance in later times, as no assignable cause has ever been pointed out either for its origin or its cessation.

Its first appearance, as a cause of death, in the bills of mortality of London, was in the year 1634, when the total number of deaths under this head was only 14; but an extraordinary increase soon took place. For, in 1649, the deaths from rickets amounted to 190; in 1650, to 260; in the following year, to 329; and in 1660, 521 persons died of this disease. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, the mortality from this disorder was 393 (A. D. 1700); and it subsequently decreased rapidly; for in the year 1750, the number of deaths, recorded in the bills under the head of rickets, is only 21; and at the end of the century (1799), the deaths, under the head of "evil and rickets" conjoined, do not exceed 7.

This disease seldom commences before the ninth month, and rarely after the second year, of a child's age; but it may appear at any interval between these two periods. Its progress is at first usually very slow. The early appearances of its approach are a flaccidity of the muscular flesh, and a certain degree of emaciation of the body, notwithstanding that the appetite for food is rather increased than impaired; together with a paleness and loss of color in the complexion, and a slight degree of fulness or tumefaction in the face. The head at the same time appears large with respect to the body,

RIDE. In the Sea Language, is a term variously applied: thus, a ship is said to ride, when her anchors hold her fast, so that she does not drive by the force either of the wind or tide. A ship is said to ride across, when she rides with her fore and main yards hoisted up to the hounds, and both yards and arms topped alike. She is said to ride well, when she is built so as not to over-beat herself in a head-sea, the waves over-raking her from stem to stern. To ride athwart, is to ride with her side to the tide. To ride betwixt wind and tide, is

way, and the tide the contrary way. If the wind has more power over the ship than the tide, she is said to ride wind-road, or to ride a great wind. And she is said to ride a-portoise, when the yards of a ship are struck down upon the deck.

RIDER. A schedule, or small piece of parchment, added to some part of a record; as when, on the third reading of a bill in Parliament, a new clause is added, that is tacked to the bill, on a separate piece of parchment, and is called a rider.

RIDICULE. In Ethics, is commonly used in the same sense with irrision; and has for its objects the absurdities and misfortunes of mankind. The latter, however, are very improper objects of ridicule, whose province should extend only to the carelessness, inconstancy, humor, impertinence, and in short all the lesser follies and imperfections of mankind. Such are generally the subjects of Horace's Satires; and Dr. More observes, that irrision, which is the parent of ridicule, was the original of satire.

RIDING SCHOOL. A public place where persons are taught to sit gracefully on a horse, and use the bridle with propriety.

ཝཱ ཝཱ ཝཱ སུ

RIFLE. In Military Affairs, a kind of gun, which has the inside of its barrel cut with 'from

three to nine or ten spiral grooves, so as to make it resemble a female screw, varying from a common screw only in this, that its grooves or rifles are less deflected, and approach more to a right line, it being usual for the grooves with which the best rifled barrels are cut, to take about one whole turn in a length of thirty inches. The number of these grooves differs according to the size of the barrel and fancy of the workman; and their depth and width are not regulated by any invariable rule. There are also different methods of charging pieces of this kind, but the usual one is as follows:-After the powder is put in, a leaden bullet, somewhat larger than the bore of the gun, is taken, and it having been well greased, is laid on the mouth of the piece, and rammed down with an iron rammer. The softness of the lead giving way to the violence with which the bullet is impelled, that zone of the bullet which is contiguous to the piece, varies its circular form, and acquires the shape of the inside of the barrel, so that it becomes the part of a male screw, exactly fitting the indents of the rifle. And hence it happens that, when the piece is fired, the indented zone of the bullet follows the sweep of the rifles, and thereby, besides its progressive motion, acquires a circular one round the axis of the barrel, which motion will be continued to the bullet after its separation from the piece; by which means a bullet discharged from a rifled barrel is constantly made to whirl round an axis which is coincident with the line of its flight.

In Germany and Switzerland, an improvement is made in the above method, by cutting a piece of very thin leather in a circular shape, larger than the bore of the barrel. This circular piece being greased on one side is laid upon the muzzle with its greasy side downwards, and the bullet, being placed upon it, is then forced down the barrel with it: by which means the leather encloses the lower half of the bullet, and by its interposition between the rifles, prevents the lead from being cut by them. But in those barrels where this method is practised, the rifles are generally shallow, and the bullet ought not to be too large. The rifle barrels, which have been made in England, where they are not very common, are contrived to be charged at the breech, the piece being, for this purpose, made larger there than in any other part. The powder and bullet are put in through the side of the barrel by an opening, which, when the piece is loaded, is filled up with a screw. By this means, when the piece is fired, the bullet is forced through the rifles, and acquires the same spiral motion as in the former kind of pieces; but these are neither safe nor so certain as the others.

To enable these pieces to be loaded with greater expedition, it has been proposed to have the balls cast with projections to them, by making corresponding hollows round the zone of the bulletmoulds; by this means the balls may be fitted so accurately to the rifles as to leave scarcely any windage; while the friction will be less than it is either when the ball is put in at the breech, or forced in at the muzzle. And, to render them in this respect still more complete, the sweep of the rifles should be in each part exactly parallel to each other; for then, after the bullet is once put in motion, it will slide out of the barrel without any shake,

and with a much smaller degree of friction than if
the threads of the rifles have not all of them the
same degree of incurvation.

RIFLEMEN. Soldiers armed with rifles, and
employed as marksmen to fire behind hedges.

RIGHT. Right is a word, which, in the pro-
priety of the English language, is used sometimes
as an adjective and sometimes as a substantive.
As an adjective it is nearly of the same import with
fit, suitable, becoming, proper; and whilst it ex-
presses a quality, it indicates a relation. Thus,
when we say that an action is right, we must not
only know the nature of the action, but, if we
speak intelligibly, must also perceive its relation to
the end for which it was performed; for an action
may be right with one end in view which would
be wrong with another. The conduct of that gen-
eral would be right, who, to save an army that
could not be otherwise saved, should place a small
detachment in a station where he knew they would
all be inevitably cut off; but his conduct would be
very wrong were he to throw away the life of a
single individual for any purpose, however impor-
tant, which he knew how to accomplish without
such a sacrifice.

Many philosophers have talked of actions being
right and wrong in the abstract without regard to
their natural consequences; and converting the
word into a substantive, they have fancied an eter-
|nal rule of right, by which the morality of human
conduct is in every particular case to be tried. But
in these phrases we can discover no meaning.
Whatever is right must be so on some account or
other; and whatever is fit, must be fit for some
purpose. When he who rests the foundation of
virtue on the moral sense, speaks of an action being
right, he must mean that it is such as, through the
medium of that sense, will excite complacency in
the mind of the agent, and gain to him the general
approbation of mankind. When he who rests
moral obligation on the will of God, speaks of some
actions as right and others as wrong, he must mean
that the former are agreeable to the Divine will,
however made known to men, and the latter dis-
agreeable to it; and the man who deduces the law
of virtue from what he calls the fitness of things,
must have some end in view, for which things are
fit, and denominate actions right or wrong as they
tend to promote or counteract that end.

But the word right, used as a substantive, has in common as well as in philosophical language a signification which at first appears to be very different from this. It denotes a just claim or an honest possession. Thus we say, a father has a right to reverence from his children, a husband to the love and fidelity of his wife, and a king to the allegiance of his subjects. But if we trace these rights to their source, we shall find that they are all laws of moral obligation, and that they are called rights only because it is agreeable to the will of God, to the instinctive dictates of the moral sense, or to the fitness of things, if such a phrase has any meaning, that children reverence their parents, wives love their husbands, &c.

RIGHT ANGLE. The angle formed by one line falling perpendicularly upon another.