Page:Cyclopaedia, Chambers - Supplement, Volume 2.djvu/332

 QUA

QUiE

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^UACHILTO, in zoology, the name of a very beautiful Brafilian bird, of the moorhen kind, called alio yacarintli, and porphyria Americanus. It is of a fine blackifh purple colour, variegated with white. Its beak is white, while young ; but becomes red as it grows older, and has a naked (pace at its bafis, refembling, in fome fort, the coot. Its legs are of a yellowifh green. It lives about the waters, and feeds on fifh; yet is a very well tafted fifh. It imitates the crowing of a common cock, and makes its mufic early in the morning. Marggrave's Hift. Brafil.

QIJADRANGULARIS^/j, the Jq uare-fijh, in zoology, the name of a fifh, which in its moft ufua! fixe, is about fifteen inches long, four inches high in the middle, and three inches and an half over. The forehead is fquare, a little hollow, and, by the eminency of the eyebrows, two inches and an half over. The nofe blunt, and not very deep, with two holes in the place of noftrils, and the mouth very final!. The back is a little convex toward the tail, and on the fides a little obtufely angled ; as is alfo the belly, which is plain and flat, and a little rifing toward the tail. It has five fins, two near the gills, two near the tail, and the tail-fin, which is confiderably long. Part of the head and tail are co- vered with a foft fkin, the reft of the body with a kind of cruft, adorned all over with little round knots, reduced for the moft part into hexagonal figures, and fubdivided into equilateral tri- angles. Grevj. Muf. Reg. Soc. p. 1 10.

QUADRANS, [Cyd.) a word ufed by'fomc authors to exprefs a fourth part of a pound, that is, three ounces Troy weight, or four of the averdupois.

QUADRATING of a piece, in gunnery, is examining whether the piece be duly placed in its carriage, and that the wheels be of an equal height.

QUADRATO, orQuADRO, in the Italian mufic, is a name given to the note B, when it comes in the natural or diatonic order, and is thus marked h. It is a femitone minor higher

than the B mol, or (3, and in refpe<St of that may be called Jbarp. See Flat and Sharp, Cyd. and Suppl.

QUADRATULUS, in ichthyology, a name given by Rondele- tius to the fifh called by other authors the platejfa, and pajfer lavis, in Englifh the plaife.

This is properly a fpecies of the pleuroneftes, and is diftin- guifhed from the reft of that genus by Artedi, by a name ex- preftmg that it has the eyes and fix tubercles on the right fide of the head, and fmooth fides, and a fpine at the anus. See the article Pleuronectes.

QUADRATURE of the hyperbola. See Hyperbola.

QUADRATUS (Cyd.) — Quadratus, in zoology, a name by which fome authors have called the fiat fifh, called pajfer by moft writers, and in Englifh the plaife. Rmdelet. de Pifc. > 3V-

Quadratus, in anatomy, a fmall, flat, flefhy mufcle, of the figure of an oblong fquare, fituated' tranfverfely between the tuberofity of the ilehium and the great trochanter. It is fixed by one ex- tremity along that obtufeline which runs from under the ace- tabulum, toward the lower part of the tuberofity of the is- chium; from whence it runs direclly towards the great tro- chanter, and is inferted in almoft all the lower half of the ob- long eminence in that apophyfis, but chiefly in the fmall rifing or tuberofity in the middle of that eminence. JVinfloui\ Anat. p. 211.

Quadratus lumborum 9 Jive lumbarh externus, a fmall, oblong, flat mufcle, irregularly fquare, narrower at its upper than at its lower part, lying along the fides of the vertebra lumborum, between the laft felfe rib and the os ilium. It is fixed below to the external labium of almoft all the pofterior half of the crifta of the os ilium, to the ligamentum facro-iliacum, and a little to the os facrum, by a flefhy plane, the fibres whereof run obliquely backward ; from thence it runs up between the facro-lumbaris and pfoas, by both which it is partly hid, and is inferted in the extremities of all the tranfverfe apophyfes of tile loins by oblique tendinous dictations. It is alfo fixed by a broad infertion in the twelfth rib, on the infide of the hVa- ment which lies between it and the longiflimus dorfi, °by which that rib is connected to the firft vertebra of the loins. Win/low's Anat. p. 249.

Quadratus mufcidus> in anatomy, is alfo a name given by Winnow to the mufcle of the lips called by Albinus and Cow- per deprejjhr iab'ti inferior!*. QUADRIGA, among the Romans, chariots drawn by four horfes, which were harnefled all a-breaft, and not two and two. Pitifc. in voc. QUADRISET-ffi, the four-haired fiyi a term ufed by the writers in natural hiftory to exprefs thofe flies of the feticaude or hair- tailed kind, which have four hairs or briftles growing from $he tail, as the others have three, two, or one.

QUADRUL-A, in natural hiftory, a word fometime3 ufed in the fame fenfe as teflela, and fpoken of the cubic pyrites. Sometimes it is ufed alfo as the name of thofe little fpangles of fhining matter that are mixed among fand. Thefe are gene- rally fragments of talc, and are of various colours, white, yellow, and blackifh.

Solinus has ufed the word quadrula to exprefs the fragments of ytllowtalc that are found in that fand called ammochryfos, or golden fand. He miffakes thefe fhining particles for manes of real gold, and makes the fand itfelf a kind of precious fub- ftance ranked among the gems, and brought from Perfia ; but in this he does not agree with the reft of the antients. QUADRUPEDS, (Cyd.) in natural hiftory. The efTential cha- racter of quadrupeds is, that they have a hairy body and four feet, and that the females are viviparous, and give fuck to their young. Liwieei Syftem. Natur. p. 33. Alated Quadrupeds. Among the many fabulous things with which natural hiftory has been loaded, ftories of flying quadru- peds feem to claim a very high rank ; the gryphon, the qua- druped dragon, and a great many other imaginary animals, having been introduced fo ferioufly among the defcriptions of real animals, that too many have been taught to believe them. Scheuchzer, in his Phyfua facra Jobi, has done much toward difcountenancing fuch relations, and Hyacinthus Gemma, who has written exprefly de fabulofis animalibus, has added much on the fame occafion : yet ail is not done. The world have late hiftories of lemmas and bafilifks, which never exifted but in the imagination of the relator, or in the fubtle con- trivances of the fabricator j as is evidently the cafe in the bafi- lifks, which we find in the mufseums of the curious, and which are all made out of the wray-fifh. " And the generality of readers are fo fond of any thing that is marvellous, that thefe things are fure to be remembered, while perhaps all the truths in the book are forgotten.

Tho' moft of the ftories cf alated or flying quadrupeds ars falfe, yet there are evidently fome animals which fhew, that this property is not denied to all quadrupeds. We have bats in every part of this kingdom, and the Eaft and Weft Indies are not without them ; and whoever accurately examines this creature, will find that it has nothing of a bird but that one property of flying; and that what are called its wings, and ' ferve it in the office of wings, are in reality only its fore-feet extended, and webbed with a peculiar kind of membrane. There is a fpecies of flying lizard very common in Java, and called by many the flying dragon. Bellonius had led the world into a great error in regard to this animal, having miftaken it for a two-legged creature, and defcribed and figured it as fuch ; but Bontius, and others fince his time, have fet us right about it from their own obfervation, and Pifo, as well as many others, have defcribed it truly as a quadruped. Thefe creatures are properly enough called flying animals, as they can fufpend themfelves a long time in the air, and move about in it at pleafure ; but lefs accurate writers have added to the numbers of flying quadrupeds the common fquirrel, and feveral other creatures which live in woods, and beino- very light in their bodies, and very ftrong in their legs, can leap or' throw themfelves forward to a great diftance, and by this means pafs from one tree to another. Of this kind the moft eminent is that fpecies called the fiung fquirrel, which has a fort of membrane which it expands on each fide to catch the air, and fupport it from falling in its leaps; which by this means it makes very long, and feems to fly, efpecially when it throws itfelf from the top of a very high tree to a low fhrub. Upon the whole, the ftandard of the flying or alated quadru- peds feems to be properly enough reducible to this : that the words flying and alated are not fynonymous terms, and that there are three kinds of Hying among the quadruped clafs. The firft abfolute and fwift, flying as perfect as in birds; this peculiarly belongs to the bat, which is the only alated or wing- ed quadruped, properly fpeaking. 2. An imperfect flying by means of certain membranes ferving as wings, but imperfettlv, and not turning quick, or enduring long flights ; fuch is the flying of the lizard, which is not properly an alated animal. And laftly, the imperfect flying of the fquirrel kind, which even in tliat fpecies called, by way of eminence, xhc, flying JquirreU is not properly flying, but only long leaping ; the creature being able to turn but very little out of a right line, and only to fufpend itfelf during a fhort time in a leap from a high place to a lower. Phil. Tranf. N D. 427. p. 34. QUADRUPLATORES, among the Romans, were informers, who had the fourth part of the confifcated goods for their pains. Pitifc. in voc. QU^ERENS non invenk plcgium, a return made by the fherifF upon a writ direaed to him with this claufe, viz. St A. fecerit B. fecurum de demote fuo prsjequendi, &c. F.N. B. 38. Blount,

Cowel.

QUJESTOR,