Page:Cyclopaedia, Chambers - Supplement, Volume 2.djvu/445

 SEA

SeA green. 'To make this colour in the glafs trade, the fineft cryftalline glafs only muft be ufed, and no manganefe muft be added at firft to the metal. The cryftal fritt muft be melted thus alone, and the fajt, which fwims like oil on its top, muft be taken off with an iron ladle very carefully. Then to a pot of twenty pound of this metal, add fix ounces of calcined brafs, and a fourth part of the quantity of powdered zaffer : this powder muft be well mixed, and put into the glafs at three times, it will make the metal fwell at firft, and all muft be thoroughly mixed in the pot. After it has ftood in fufion three hours, take out a little for a proof; if it be too pale, add more of the powder. Twenty four hours after the mixing the powder the whole will be ready to work, but muft be well ftirred together from the bottom, left the colour fhould be deepeft there, and the me- tal at the top lefs coloured, or even quite colourlefs. Some ufe for this purpofe half cryftal fritt, and half rochetta fritt, but the colour is much the fineft when all cryftal fritt is ufed. Nen's Art of Glafs, p. 39. Sea gudgeon, an Englifh name given to the fifti called by die generality of writers gobius niger, and the gobius marinus. Artedi, who has made a genus of the gobii, excludes the common gudgeon, or gobio ftuviatilis, from it, but he admits this fifh as a genuine fpecies of it.

Athenaeus tells us of three kinds of gudgeons, the black, the yellow, and the white. This feems to have been very plainly the black gudgeon of that author. Salvian, in his fi- gure of this fifh, has given three fins on the back, but it really has only two. Sea hen, in zoology, a name given by fome to the lomwia, a webfooted bird, common on our coafts, and called \h& guil- lemot, or kiddow. See Lomwia. Sea horfe, the Englifh name of the hippocampus, a fpecies of the acus, according to the older writers, and one of the fyn- gnathi of Afteol. See thefe heads.

The many idle tales reported of this vaft amphibious crea- ture, fuch as his method of bleeding himfelf when diftemper- ed, his vomiting fire when enraged, and the like, have made people, in almoft all ages, defirous of feeing the animal. The Romans were fond of exhibiting it in their fhews of wild beafts, and the defcription Pliny gave of it from thence, was all the world knew of the creature for many ages. That author's account, however, of its feeding on grafs on the banks of the Nile, no way agrees with the teeth we find its mouth furnilhed with.

The fceletons of thefe animals, as rare as they are with us at prefent in their recent irate, yet are found not unfre- quently, in part at leaft, buried under ground, and that at great depths. The bones of the head are different from thofe of any other known animal, and when found in fome

fiarts of France, had always puzzled the wits of the natura- ifts there, who had in vain compared them with thofe of oxen, horfes, &c. but at length one of the heads of thefe animals being fent over to France, cleared up the whole dif- ficulty. The two jaws of this weighed forty five pounds, and were two feet long, a foot deep, and a foot and half wide. It is eafy to conceive from this, that the accounts we have of the fize of the an imal are not fabulous, thefe bones corresponding very well with them. Mem. Acad. Par. 1724.

Sea loufe, pediculus marinus, a name given to the Molucca crab. See Squilla.

Sea man. We have many accounts, even from authors of credit, of fomething refembling the human figure feen tf. fea, and fancy has carried them to fuch a height, that the truth of the defcription is loft in moft of them. The fyrens, which we have accounts of even in Bartholin, and the fea man, or homo marinus, as it was called, feen and defcribed by Barchewitz, give the greateft credit to the ftory; but writers are fo fond of telling marvellous things, that great allowances are to be made in the reading. The general defcription of the fea man is, that from the navel downwards the whole is only a fhapelefs lump of flefh, without any the leaft mark, either of limbs, fins, or tail. On the bread; there ftand two pectoral fins, which are each compofed of five bones or rays, refembling the human hand, and connected together by a membrane like the toes of a duck, or fome other water fowl's foot. Thefe fins are what have the appearance of fomething hu- man, and when feen about the bofom of a white bellied fifti, may be taken for hands with ftiort arms, and the refem- blance of a head is eafily fancied. Thefe fins are not pecu- liar to any one kind of fifti, but the manati, or fea cow, the rana pifcatrix, or lophius, and many others have them. It is probable from moft of the accounts we have, that the manati, ox fea cow, is the creature, which being feen raif- ing its head above water at a diftance, and extending thefe pectoral fins, which are what it fwims with, has given rife to the idea of the upper part of a human figure. As to the defcription of a fhapelefs lump of flefh making up the lower part of the animal, it feems too contrary to the courfe of nature in all other fea animals, to have any foun- dation in reality, and probably was only the invention of the defcriber, to make out what he did not fee above water. It is true that Barchewitz, takes great pains to prove that the

SEA

fea man, or homo marinus, he defcribes, Was a wholly diffe- rent creature from the fea cow; but his defcription of it carries too little the air of any thing in nature, to meet with an eafy credit.

It is wonderful, that fo judicious a writer as Artedi fhould give any faith to the exiftence of fo ftrange a fifh as this, but he mentions it with a great air of diftruft, and wifties a more perfect hiftory of itj if it any where exifts. The public are often impofed upon by cheats, who ftiew different things under the name ox fea men, mermaids, and fyrens ; but if we may judge of the generality of thefe creatures, thus fhewn by the lateft inftance among us, they are very wretched counterfeits indeed. This creature was faid to be a young mermaid, taken on the Acapulca fhore, and maintained its credit fo well in London, as to afford the proprietor a comfortable fubfiftence for ten months among us, though no other than a human fcetus of about eight months, with a hydrocephalus head, and with the two legs growing together, and covered by one common mem- brane. The toes of this fcetus were beat out into a refem- blance of fins.

Sea owl, in ichthyology, a name given by many to that fifh, which we more ufually call the lump fifii, the lumpus of Wil- lughby, &c. and the cydopierus of Artedi, which fee.

Sea pheafant, in zoology, the name of a bird of the duck kind, but differing from all the other fpecies in the fhape of its tail ; which has two long feathers, ftanding out beyond the reft, and terminating in a point. It is called more gene- rally the cracker. See the article Cracker.

Sea plants. Count Marfigli, who was at indefatigable pains to collect the various fea plants of feveral places, divides all thofe productions into three claffes.

The firft clafs contains the foft, or herbaceous ones ; the fecond the ligneous ones, or fuch as are of a woody hard- nefs ; and the third, thofe which are of the hardnefs of ftone. Of the firft clafs are the algas, called fea wracks, the fu- cufes, or fea oaks, the fea mojfes± or confervas, and the diffe- rent fpecies of fpunges.

Of the fecond kind are thofe called lythdphyta by the antients^ as if their hardnefs approached to that of ftones. All thefe confift of two fubftances, a cortical and an internal : the cor- tical part, while in the fea, is foft, but in drying it becomes as hard as chalk, or thereabouts, eafily crumbling to pieces between the fingers ; this is what deceived the amients into an opinion of its being of a ftony nature. The internal fubftance, properly fpeaking, feems more the nature of horn than of wood ; if it is burnt, it throws out a fpume, or froth, like that which horns or feathers of animals yield in the fire, and their fmell in burning is of the fame kind. The branches of thefe plaMs are very pliablej bending in the manner of whalebone, and they give the fame refinance to a knife in the cutting.

The ftony plants, which fhould properly be called the lytho- phyta, but which never are called fo, are the feveral fpecies of coral, madrepora, and the like. The madrepora differs from the coral, in having its furface pierced with almoft in- numerable holes.

The algas are the only fa plants which have any roots, properly fo called ; thefe therefore grow out of the foft bot- tom of the fea, as other plants out of the earth, but all the other fea plants, without exception, appear fixed upon hard and folid bodies, incapable of affording them any nourifh- ment ; fuch as ftones, fhells, pieces of iron, of wood, fefc. and fometimes on other plants ; and they arc not fattened to thefe fubftances by fibres pafling into, or furrounding them, but merely by a foot or pediment, capable of only fixing them down, not of drawing nourifhment from the fub- ftances, were there any there. From this obfervation the author concludes, that all the plants which have no roots may be properly faid to be all root, or to perform the office of roots in their whole fubftance, or that they take in nou- rifhment in every part by certain pores, which in many are vifible, and cover the whole furface.

This manner of receiving nourifhment, he alfo obferves* very well fuits their condition, fince they are always iur- rounded, on all fides, with that water by which they are to be nourifhed ; whereas the plants, which grow at land, have only a part of them buried in the earth, from whence they are to be fupplied with the proper juices. The roots of land plants, therefore, have only the ueceffary organs for receiv- ing fupplies ; whereas the fea plants he finds to be all over covered with fmall glandules, whofe office it is to receive and to convey, into the internal parts of the plant, the proper juices for its nourifhment, and thefe he obferves are, in ge- neral, of a glutinous and milky nature. The great diffe- rence between the land and fea plants is feen in this familiar inftance ; a land plant will remain frefh for a long time, in all its parts, on one end of the ftalk only being plunged in water, but a fea plant, if part of it be out of Water and part in will always be frefh and vigorous in that part which is under water, while the part that is dry will wither and de- cay. It is eafy hence to fee, that the feveral parts of the land plants have connections with, and dependances on one another; whereas, in the fea plant j every part takes in its

own