Page:Cyclopaedia, Chambers - Supplement, Volume 1.djvu/875

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norfe in figure, though the truth is it requires a very warm imagination to make out the refemblance. The ftone is compofed of the matter of the common coarfer quarry-ftone, and owes its figure to a fhell of the cockle- kind, into which having been received at a time when it was moift and foft, it has taken the exact figure and lineaments of its inner parts. It is about the fize of the larger bucardita, from an inch and half, to two inches and a half in length, and indeed very much refembles that ftone, having been formed wholly in the fame manner, and that in a fhell of the

. fame genus. Hill's EM. of Foff. p. 646.

HIPPOCRATEA, in botany, the name of a genus of plants firft defcribed by Plumier under the name of coa. The cha- racters arc thefe : The cup is a one-leaved perianthium lightly divided into five fegments, which are obtufe, expand- ed, and larger than the flowers. The flower confifts of one leaf, and is of an oval form, with a truncated undivided edge. The fruit is a capfule of a flatted figure, expanded and divided into three parts, and each of thefe again divided into three fegments. It contains three cells, each of them compofed of two valves of a comprefled and carniated figure. The feeds are oblong and edged with a membranaceous rim. Linnasus is very fufpicious that the author from whom he takes thefe characters, has defcribed the plant too carelefsly, as the whole feems a very extraordinary fructification. Linnai Gen. PI. p. 518. Plumier. p. 35.

HIPPOCREPIS, in botany, the name given by Linnasus to the plant ufually called by authors ferrum equinum y or the horfc- fhoe vetch. Linnai Gen. PI. p. 364. Seethe article Fer- rum Equinum.

HIPPO DROMUS, in chronology, the Boeotian name for the Athenian month Hecacombason, which was the firft of their year, and anfwered to the latter part of our June, and be- ginning of July. Vid. Potter's Arch. Grasc. 1. 3. c. 26. See the article EcAToMBiEON.

HlPPOGLGbSUS, in zoology, the name of the holibut ; a large flat fifh caught in the Britifh. feas and elfewhere. It is the biggeft of all the fifh of this kind, and is fomewhat of the Jhape of a turbot, but larger and longer bodied, and confe- quently lefs fquare ; its back is of a dufky brownifh green, its fcales extremely fmall, and the whole furface of the fifh very fmooth, having no crooked prickles on the fides. The eyes are on the right fide, and the belly has fix fmall fins be- fide the larger ftrait ones. It is caught in the German and Britifh feas, and its flefh is very delicate. Rondelet de Pjfc. p. 35 r. Gefner. p. 787.

HIPPOGLOSSUM, Horfe-tangue, in botany, the name of a plant of the ritfeus, or butcher's broom kind, called by others the Alexandrian bay, or laurus Alexandrina* See the article Roscus.

HIPPOLITHOS, a name given by fome authors to the ftones found in the ftomachs and interlines of horfes : there are often a great number of thefe in one horfe, and they are frequently found in the colon, of a very large fize.

HIPPOMANE, in botany, the name of a genus of plants firft defcribed by Plumier under the name of viancamlla. The characters are thefe : It produces feparate male and female flowers on different parts of the fame plant ; thefe are both very imperfectly defcribed by Plumier, who only obferves, that the male flower has no petals. The fruit fucceeding the female flower is an extremely large round berry, lightly urn- bilicated, and containing only one cell, in which is enclofed a Woody nut. Plumier. p. 30. Linnai Gen. Plan. p. 517.

HIPPOMYRMEX, the Horfe-ant, the name of a fpecies of ant much larger and nimbler than the common kind. This builds m woods, and makes its neft of flicks and flraws, and frag- ments of various parts of trees. The common ant builds only with earth.

HIPPOPHAE, in botany, the name given by Linnaeus to a genus of plants called Rbamnoides by Tournefort and others. The characters of which are thefe : It produces feparate male and female flowers. In the male flowers the perianthium is whole at the bafe, but divided into two roundifh, obtufe, and hollow fegments ; thefe Hand erect, and bend towards one another at the top, but feparate at the fides. There are no petals ; the ftamina are four filaments, very fhort, and bear- ing oblong and angular apices of the length of the cup. In the female flower the cup is compofed of one leaf of an oval, ob- long, and tubulated figure, and is flightly bifid at the mouth. There are no petals. The piflil has a (mail roundifh o-ermen ; the flyle is fingle, and very fhort ; the ftigma is thick, ob- long, and erect, and is twice as long as the cup ; the fruit is a globofe berry, having only one cell, and containing only one roundifh feed. Linnai Gen. PI. p. 473. Toumefort y p, 481.

HIPPOPHEOS. This was a name given not only to the larger fpecies of the pheos or fleebc, but to a very different plant, a kind of dodder, more vulgarly called epipheos, from its grow- ing upon the pheos, as the dodder of thyme is called epithy- mum from its growing upon that plant. It is poffible indeed that it might be called originally Hippepbeos, from its riding, as it were, on the pheos. But however this be, there is great reafon to fufpect that Diofcorides confounds this dodder with the plant itfelf, and gives its virtues as thofe of the proper Hippopheos ; which, according Theophraftus, and all the other ■ Sl/ppl. Vox,. I.

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writers of credit in antiquity, is only a larger fpecies of the pheos, a prickly fhrub, not a plant," growing on it. See the article Epipheos. H1PPOPHTHALMIC ihufcUs; a name given by the ichthyo- logilts to a pair of large mufcles found in the heads of fifheSj one placed immediately under each eye ; thefe ferve to move the eyes ; and with the two maxillary mufcles placed under the jaws, are the principal mufcular parts of the head of fifties.

HIPPOPOTAMUS, in zoology, the name of a very lingular quadruped, called in Englifh the river horfe, and by fome, though lefs properly, the fea horfe. It approaches in figure partly to the buffalo, and partly to the bear. It is larger than the buffalo, and its legs are very like the bear's. The full grown animal is thirteen foot long from its head to its tail, and four foot and a half in the diameter of its body, and its belly is rather flat than ridged ; the circumference of its body is ufually equal to its whole length, and its legs three foot and a half long ; its legs three foot round, and its feet a foot broad ; its head is very large in proportion to its body, and its mouth is capable of opening a foot wide ; its eyes are fmall, its ears alfo fmall and thin ; its teeth are as hard as flint, and will readily give fire with fteel ; it is ufually very fat ; its hoofs are black, much like thofe of the common cloven-footed beafts, but divided into four claws inftead of two ; its upper jaw is moveable in the manner of the croco- dile's. Its tail is more like that of a bear or a tortoife, than a hog's, to which it has ufually been compared ; it is very thick at its infertion, and tapers away to the end ; it is not above fix inches long, and fo thick that it cannot twift about. Its ftin is extremely hard and tough, and in colour black ; and its nofe is furnifhed with ftiff hairs or whifkers, in the man- ner of a cat's, feveral ftiff hairs growing from the fame hole ; and thefe are the only hairs the creature has, its whole body being naked. It has two large teeth in the lower jaw, fome- what refembling the tufks of the boar, and a little crooked, but not Handing out of the mouth like the boar's tufks ; thefe are much larger than the other teeth, and fometimes grow to a toot in length.

It is found in the Nile and Niger, and many other great ri- vers ; it comes out of the water to bring forth its young, and feeds upon rice, herbs, and the roots of the colocafia! Its feet being not web'd, fhew that it is not intended for fwim- ing, and probably it fpends its time in walking about at the bottom of the rivers. It is very plainly proved by Bochart, that this is the creature mentioned under the name of the be- hemoth in the book of Job. Ra/s Syn. Quad. p. 124. In the Linnaean fyftem of zoology, the Hippopotamus makes a diftincl genus of animals of the jumenta kind, the characters of which are, that it has two paps fituated in the groin ; its dentes incifores, or cutting teeth, are four on each fide, the upper ones placed at diftances by pairs, the lower ones pro- minent, with the middle two the larger! ; the dog-teeth are fingle, and feem as if cut off obliquely. Linnet Syft. Na- turae, p. 48.

HIPPOSIS, in the writings of the antient phyficians, fignifies a reducing any part of the body into its natural fituation, by means of compreflion.

HIPPOSORCH1S, in fome difpenfatories, a name given to a powder of the tefticles of horfes.

HIPPOTAURUS, in natural hiftory, the name given by au- thors to a creature generated between a bull and a mare. It feems a very unnatural copulation j but Wagner in his hiftory of Swiflcrland allures us, that the creature produced by it is fometimes found wild in the mountainous parts of that coun- try-

HIPPURIS, in the Linnsan fyftem of botany, a genus of plants called by others limnopeuce. The characters of this genus are, an extremely fmall calyx, made up of two very fmall rims placed oppoiite to one another, and furrounding the germen. It has no vifible flower, and only one ftamen fixed upon the calix, and furnifhed with a femibifid anthera ; the piftillum is compofed of an oblong germen under the receptacle of feeds, and a fingle, pointed, and erect, ftyle, contained in the ftamen, but larger than it, and an angular ftigma. The ked is fingle, roundilh, and naked, or furrounded with no fort of pericarpium. Linnai Gen. PI. p. I.

Hippuris, in ichthyography, the name of a large fea fifh, very much refembling the dorado, or gold fifh, and by many fufpedf ed to be the fame fpecies. It is a very remarkable fifh, having a fort of creft rifing immediately behind its head, which is continued in a long fin to the tail j and there is another in fome meafure anfwering this, and reaching from the anus to the tail ; its gill-fins are fhort and broad, and in fome fott refemble ears ; its belly-fins are longer, of a blackifh colour, and reach nearly to the anus, which is fituated in the middle of the belly ; its mouth is of a moderate fize, its teeth fmall, but fharp, and placed not only in the jaws, but on the pa- late and the tongue ; its eyes are large, and its fcales very fmall. It is the quickeft of all fifh in its growth, which is an obfervation as old as the time of Ariftotle, but is found true to this day. It is caught upon the coafts of Spain, but that only at one time of the year in the month of Auguft. It is a very delicate and well-tafted fifh, and is much efteemed a t 13 K. table.