Page:Cyclopaedia, Chambers - Supplement, Volume 2.djvu/353

 RAN

RAP

mountain crowfoot with large white flowers. 27/riie aconite leaved mountain crowfoot with fmaller white flowers. 28. The aconite leaved mountain crowfoot with double white flow- ers. 29. The aconite leaved mountain crowfoot with large fingle yellow flowers. 30. The crowfoot with leaves like thofeof the knotty rooted crane's bill. 31. The hairy moun- tain crowfoot with very broad leaves. 32. The crane's bill leaved downy mountain crowfoot. 33. The yellow flowered fine leaved mountain crowfoot. 34. The woolly mountain crozvfoot with leaves like thofe of the common meadow crowfoot. 35. The rock crowfoot with large flowers. 36. The roundiih leaved rock crowfoot. 37. The very hairy Montpelier crowfoot. 38. The fmallage leaved hairy marih crowfoot. 39- The fmooth fmallage leaved marfh crowfoot.

40. The purple flowered fmallage leaved marfh crowfoot.

41. The water crowfoot with fome of the leaves roundiih, and others capillaceous. Ibid. p. ago.

Of the capillaceous leaved ranuncuiufes, the fpecies are thefe. 1. The capillaceous or fine leaved water crowfoot. 2. The white flowered floating water crowfoot with peucedanum leaves. 3. The fennel leaved crowfoot with roots like thofe of black hellebore, called by authors the fine leaved black hellebore. The confiUgo, the hellebore of Hippocrates, and the bupththalmmn, or ox eye. 4. The fmaller or lower fennel leaved crowfoot with very large flowers, and jointed ftalks. 5. The camomile leaved red flowered iicld crowfoot, commonly called the adonis flower, the pheafant's eye, or red maithes. 6. The longer leaved chamomile crowfoot with orange coloured flowers. 7. The chamomile crowfoot with fmall yellow flowers. 8. The betony leaved moun- tain crowfoot. Ibid. p. 291.

Of the fet of long leaved crowfoots the fpecies are thefe. I. The grafTy leaved mountain crowfoot. 2. The double flowered grafTy leaved mountain crowfoot. 3. The bulbofe rooted grafly leaved crowfoot. 4. The fingle flowered hairy graffy leaved croivfoot. 5. The many flowered hairy grafTy leaved crowfoot. 6. The white flowered dwarf Al- pine crowfoot with graffy leaves. 7. The plantain leaved mountain crowfoot. 8. The marfh crowfoot with very large plantain like leaves, commonly called the water plantain. 9. The marfh crowfoot with narrow plantain like leaves, called the narrow leaved water plantain. 1 0. The low pro- cumbent plantain leaved water crozvfoot, called the narrow leaved procumbent water plantain. 1 1. The plantain leaved water crowfoot with very narrow leaves. 12. The Ameri- can plantain leaved water crowfoot with white flowers and purple cups. 13. The American water crowfoot with arrow head leaves. 14. The water plantain with very large arrow headed leaves, commonly called the great water arrow head. 15. The arrow headed water plantain with narrower leaves. 16. The great long leaved marfh crowfoot. iy. The broad plantain leaved fpearwort with hairy edges.

18. The leffer long leaved water crowfoot or fpearwort.

19. The fpearwort, or long leaved water crowfoot, with ferrated leaves. 20. The Bayomie fpearwort of Parkinfon. 21. The white flowered fmall fpearwort. 22. The graffy leaved crowfoot with caudated flowers, and feeds arranged into long and flender heads, commonly called moisfe tail. Ibid. p. 292.

Several of the more beautiful fpecies of this plant have long been cultivated in the Englifh gardens, and are moft of them hardy plants, and will thrive very well againft hedges, and in fhady borders, where they require no other care than to take up their roots every other year when their leaves decay, and part them, planting out the off-fets into other borders. Befide thofe we have been long ufed to, there have been fome of late times brought from Turkey and from Perfta, which produce femi-double flowers of great beauty, and an- nually ripening their feeds ; there are numbers of varieties, or as the gardeners call them new flowers continually raifed from them. Many of thefe are finely fcented j and the roots, when ftrong, produce eight or ten flowers on each. The double flowered ranuncuiufes not producing feeds, they are only to be propagated by parting their roots, taking off the ofF-fets, which they ufually produce in great plenty. The proper feafon for planting their roots is in October. The beds in which they are planted are to be of good light fandy earth, at leaft a foot deep. Common pafturc land is the belt for this ufe, to which if it prove too clayey, there mould be added a proper quantity of fea fand. This mix- ture fhould be turned often, and the larger {tones and clods taken out ; but it mull not be fkreened, or lifted very fine, for that has been the occafion of the lofs of many roots, both of this and other plants, by cohering into a hard clod with the wet, and rotting the roots.

The beds being prepared, fhould lie about a fortnight to fet- tle, and then drawing {trait and tranfverfe lines over the beds, the plants muft be planted regularly at four inches dif- tance, about an inch below the furface and the earth, care- fully drawn over them with a rake. In November the heads will appear, and then about half an inch depth of frefh earth fhould be added,which will greatly ftrengthen the plants. And if it fhould be very fevere weather, when the h^ads appear above this fecond covering, they fhould be defended with

mats laid over arched hoops. In the "beginning of March, the flower ilones will appear ; and when the flowering is paff, and the leaves are decayed, the roots are to be taken up, and laid by for the October following. Afiiler's Gard. DicT. in voc.

Ranunculus viridis, in zoology, the name of an animal common in many parts of the world, and ufually known by the name of the tree frog, or rana arborea. The creature is eafily diftinguilhed from the common frog, by its being much fmaller, and of a green colour : it ufualiy fits upon the leaves of trees and fhrubs, and makes a great noife in an evening, but that is rather like the finging of a fmall bird than the croaking of a frog.

Thefe creatures have been kept alive many years together in ' glafs veflels, giving them flies and other fmall infects ; and in winter, when thefe are fcarce, they ufually become very- lean and feeble j but in fummer, when they are plentiful, they will grow fat again, as if at their liberty. This is eileemed a poifonous creature. Ray's Syn. Quad. p. 251.

RAPA, turnep, in botany, the name of a genus of plants, the characters of which are thefe. The flower confifts of four leaves, which are difpofed in form of a crofs. The piftil arifes from the cup, and is at length changed into a long pod, divided into two cells, by an intermediate membrane, and ending in a long fungous horn, both of which contain roundifh feeds. To this, it may be added, that the root is large, flefhy, and efculent.

The fpecies of turnep, enumerated by Mr. Tournefort, are thefe. 1, The round white rooted turnep. 2. The round blackifh rooted turnep. 3. The round green rooted turnep. 4. The round red rooted turnep. 5. The round rooted tur- nep, yellow both on the outfide and within. 6. The long rooted manured turnep. Tourn. Lift. p. 228. See the arti- cle Turnep.

RAPAX, in ichthyology, a name given by Schoneveldt to the corvus ptfeis of fome writers, a fpecies of chub or cyprinus, called rappe by the Germans, and by Gefner and others capita fiuviatilis rapax. See the article Cyprinus.

Broom RAPE. See Orobanche.

RAPHA, in anatomy, the ridge or line which runs along the under fide of the penis, and reaching from the fraenum to the anus, divides the fcrotum and perina;um in two. This line is not ufually cut in the grand operation of cutting for the ftone, becaufe it is both harder than the reft of the fkin thereabouts, and alfo becaufe you muft then cut upon the interftices of the mufcles, which will make the re-union the more difficult.

RAPHANIS, in botany, 'the name by which the Attics^ among the Greeks, called the radifh ; for the word rapbanos raphanus with them, does not exprefs the radifh, but the cabbage. The Greeks, of all other places, concurred in calling the radifh rapbanos and the cabbage crambe; audit is owing to this, that we have many authors who confound together thefe two plants, though fo very unlike one another in appearance and ufe. It is generally to be underftood, that wherever Theophraftus mentions the word rapbanos, he means by it the cabbage ; and the fame being obferved, in regard to all the other Attic writers, the whole danger of confufion and error will ceafe.

A moderate knowledge either in the language or the fubjeft might have prevented errors on this occafion ; yet Pliny, in his account of the radifh, has been mined by the word ra- pbanos in Theophraftus, which is that author's name for the cabbage, and has tranflated all his account of the cahbao- e , and given it as part of the hiftory of the radifh. Theo- phraftus fays, that the Greeks diftinguifhed three kinds of the cabbage ; the fmooth leaved, the curled leaved, or crifp cabbage, and the wild cabbage : and Pliny has tranflated this verbatim, and made it a part of his hiftory of the radifh. To this he has added fome accounts from the Latin writers of their raphanus, which is the common radifh ; and putting thefe together, he has compofed an account wholly unintel- ligible to all, but thofe who fee through the occafion of the error. The virtues of the radifh he has alfo intermingled with thofe of the cabbage, interfperfing among the ac- counts he took from the Latin authors of the raphanus, the virtues and qualities of Theophraftus's rapbanos, that is the cabbage. The opinion of the cabbage and the vine being enemies to one another, znd not growing any where together, is as old as Theophraftus, and has a place in his account of that plant ; but Pliny has perplexed the cafe, by tranflating this quality as belonging to the radifh, which no other author ever gave it ; thuugh fcarce any, who have read the antients, have omitted it in the hiftory of the cabbage.

RAPHANISTRUM, in botany, the r.ame of a genus of plants, the characters of which are thefe. The flower is compofed of four leaves, placed in the manner of a crefs. The piftil arifes from the cup, and is at length made a long pod, jointed in feveral places, and refembling a fa fci a ted co- lumn, and containing roundifh feeds, one lodged in every fointof the pod. See Tab. 1. of Botany, Clais 5. The fpecies of raphimfirum, enumerated by Mr. Tourne- fort, are thefe. I. The common raplmvjlrum, with fmooth,

larger,