Page:Cyclopaedia, Chambers - Supplement, Volume 1.djvu/719

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laft change, on which it produces a four winged fly, not a butterfly.

This beautiful infect is of the fize of a middling caterpillar; it -is of a fine pearly white, variegated with a great number of round and large fpots, of a deep blackifh brown, which run down its back in two regular rows, and form two even itreaks or lines ; befide thele, there are feveral other fmaller fpots of a deep black, in feveral parts of the body, and from every one of thefe, there grows a long black hair. All thefe dark colours on the pearly ground, make a very beautiful appearance. The creature changes its skin four or five times in the courfe of its life; and in this ftate, and on the laft change before its entering on the nymph ftate, it is fo altered, that there would be no diftinguifhing it for the fame animal, if the change were not made under the eye of the obferver ; the pearly skin with all its elegant variegations is thrown off, and the creature appears of a plain green colour, without the leaft fpot or variegation. In this ftate it eats for feveral days, at the end of which time, it becomes a nymph or chryfalis, and from this iffues in form of a large fly. Reau- mwn'sHift. Inf. v. g. p. 117.

Figwort, in botany. See Scrophularia.

FIGHTING-.M, at fea. See Sails.

FIGHTS, in a (hip, are the wafte cloths which hang round a- bout her in a fight, to hinder the men from being feen by the enemy.

Clofe Fights, is ufed for thofe bulkheads afore or abaft the (hip, which are put up for men to ftand fecure behind, and fire on the enemy, in cafe of boarding.

Running Fights, at fea, thofe where the enemy does not ftand the battle, but are continually chafed.

FIGHTWITE, Fibthwha, in the Saxon times, fignified a muJ£t for making a quarrel, to the difturbance of the peace. — M.id£la ob CQinmijfam pugnam in a perturbations??! pacis, qua; in ex- £?-citu regis 10 j'olido?-u?n erat. Blount and Jacob in tranfcri- bing this paflage, have inferted 120 fols. \?Du Cange, Glofs. Lat. in voQ.fibtwita.]

FIGURAL, or Figurate numbers^ fuch as do or may repre- fent fome geometrical figure, in relation to which tltey are al- ways confidered ; as triangular, pentagonal, pyramidal, &c. numbers. See Number, Cycl

FIGURATIVE Defiant. See Descant, Cycl

FIGURE (Cycl.) — Apparent Figure, in optics. See Apparent.

Plain Figures, in geometry, fuch as are terminated and bound- ed by right lines only.

Brimjhnc Figures. See Brimstone.

Figures on China ware. There are feveral very different ways of making the figures we fee on the China ware, and ac- cording to the method ufed, they have a very different appear- ance ; but none of them are difficult. The common figures which we fee, are traced on with a pencil dipp'd in the colours prepared of ftones and earths, warned to finenefs by water, and afterwards dried, and then blended with gum-water to ufe in the common way. The common blue is our fmalt, and the finer blue a ftone they call leao ; the reddifh is calcined copperas ; and the green, a preparation of the fcorise of cop- per. Thefe will all mix with gum-water, and fpread from the pencil, and the only care to be taken in regard to them is, to make the powders very fine. The miniature paintings as they are called, on the blue china, are thus done; the vef- fel is plunged all over into the common blue, made into a "foft pafte or varniOi with water ; this gives the whole ■veffel a coat of blue, and the workman takes a fine needle fitted into a proper handle, and with the point of this, he pricks out his figure^ every touch leaving behind it a fmall white fpot, which is owing to the taking off the blue where the point touched it ; after this is finifhed, and the whole dry, the veffel is varniihed over, and the figures appear paint- ed in miniature under the furface.

The elevated or embofled figures of beafts and flowers which We fee on china, are done in a much eafier manner, than would naturally be imagined. The artifts carves thefe firft with a burin on the furface of the veffel while yet foft, after this he cuts away the fubftance about the figures^ and they appear elevated in any degree that he pleales. Thefe are painted by the common hands employed in this work, and when dry are varnifhed over, and the effect is very elegant, while the means are not at all to be difcovered. The moft beautiful of all china in the judgment of many, is that which is all white, hut has figures within the furface : thefe appear very neat and diftin£t, though the furface is per- fectly fmooth. They are made of a whiter matter than the reft, called boache (which fee); and when thefe are laid on ii this white, and covered with the common varnifh, they are feen through it, and are of a different white both from the varnifh and the fubftance of the china. Obfervations fur les Coutumes de l'Afie. p. 325.

Figure, figura, o-^y.a., in the antient mufic, is ufed for the different difpofitions of the tones and femitones in a confo- nance.

Cajl'mg of Figures — To make a figure that fhall truly repre- fent any face. See Plaster.

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FIGURED {Cycl) H» Figured Jlonss^ in natural hiftorf, % name given by fome writers to thofe foffil bodies which are found in the fhape of fhells and other parts of animals. Dif- putes among the learned have never run higher on any fub- je£t, than on the origin of thefe ftones 3 fome have declared them to be all of marine origin at firft, and that they were brought to the places where we find them in this foflil ftate, at the time of the univerfal deluge, and have been fince alter- ed into the nature of ftones, by long lying in the earth in the way of waters impregnated with ftony particles, which they have depofited in them, after entering their fubftance in their paffage through the earth.

Others are of opinion, that thefe bodies tho' refembling ever fo exaitly the fea fifties, yet never were in the fea at all : but that the firft femina of the fea fhells, corals, and other fub- ftances, being carried by the fea water through the fubterrahe- an paflages into all parts of the earth, even into the highefl: mountains, have been there left in vaft numbers, and grow- ing there among ftony matter, have arrived at their true bulk and figure, but in a ftony fubftance. Langius in a treatife exprefsly written on this fubjecl, has accurately en- quired into the fubjedt, and examined the ftrength of the ar- guments on both fides the queftion, with great fagacity and candour.

Thofe who argue for the origin of thefe foffil fhells being from the deluge, he obferves, affert, that in the time of that fatal cataftrophe, the fea fhells, corals, and other marine bodies* in company with the fands from its fhores and bottom, were by the violent agitation of the waters, toflcd out of their natural places, and carried far on land, as it was afterwards to be, where they were fcattered over the whole furface, and toffed into holes and caverns in immenfe quantities together; and in other places that the mud and fand, together with thele fhells, all were heaped up in immenfe piles; where after the going.oft of the waters, they all hardened by degrees and became ftones of feveral kinds: and that the fhells among them remained in the places to which they were brought in this manner, and be- came petrified together with the earth or mud and fand, and hence they fay were formed mountains of different 'forts of ftone, as different earths or fands concurr'd in the formation of their feveral parts ; and that hence it is, that the foffil fhells are found petrified in them, while the fcattering them over the furface of the yet foft earth, into which they pene- trated to different depths according to their own gravity and its foftnefs, accounts for their being met with in the dif- ferent ftrata now hard, and the amaihng of. them in fubterra- nean caverns at that time, exifting together with mud^ fand, &c. with which they became afterwards petrified, gives oc- cafion to the immenfe heaps of fhells, which we find in fome places, with very little ftony or earthy matter mterfper- fed among them. ■

The figured ftones reprefenting fhells in mountains, &c. are found in two forms ; the one exhibiting a furface much re- fembling the colour and fubftance of the {hell in its natural ftate, and being filled with abfolute ftony matter of another kind and colour within this cruft, which does not exceed the natural thicknefs of the fhell. The others only reprefenting the ftiape of the fhell, but all of the fame fubftance, and with- out any cruft, and that fubftance being in different inftances, of very different kinds; fome of thefe being compofed of ab- folute flints, fome of pure fpar, fome of coarfe ftone, and fome of the matter of the agate, while others are of the fubftance of the common pyrita?. The firft kind are fuppofed to be compo- fed of the very fhell itfelf yet remaining, though altered into the nature of ftone, and forming a cruft to the other ftoney matter petrified in the fame manner within it, though doubt- lefs received into it, in the form of foft mud. The others they fuppofe only to be the cafts in thefe fhells, or the mud, or other matter originally received into thofe fhells, hardened in- to ftone with the lofs of the (hell, which having been warned away and carried wholly off from it, has now left it naked; though that not having happened till after the matter was pe- trified within it, could not alter or injure that form which the contained fubftance had formed itfelf into. Thofe who afcribe the origin of thefe foffils to the deluge* fay 4 I. That it is wholly impoffible, that the figured ftonea fhould be form'd in the other way ; fince the various meanders in tha fubterranean paffages from the fea to the places where we find many of thefe bodies, are too intricate for the feminia ever to be brought through ; and are compofed of fo many different fub- ftances, through the pores of which they muft pafs, that fuch feminia as are fuppofed to be carried through them could never pafs, were it poflible to allow all the reft, in a condition to grow into their proper fhapej fince they muft have been mu- tilated by the hard bodies they paffed through, and impregna- ted by the faline and other penetrating fubftances in their way, fo as not to leave it poflible that they ihouid afterwards grow, had they all the other requifites.

a. That even fuppofing it poflible that the feminia of fhells and corals, could be thus conveyed uninjur'd from the fea to the places where we find them in their foffil ftate, even then it is wholly impoffible for them to grow ; bscaufe they want

both