Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/772

 74:6 SECRETION SEDAINE and messenger from its long steps and rapid gait. These birds are usually seen in pairs, and devour serpents and other reptiles ; when attacking a serpent they approach with one Secretary Bird (Serpentarlus reptilivorus). wing extended and acting as a shield to the body, and with the other strike the reptile, wounding it with the wing spur, tossing it into the air, and safely wearying out the most ven- omous species ; they also eat lizards, tortoises, rats, small birds, and largo insects. They run and hop very swiftly ; they are very voracious, Le Vaillant mentioning that he took from the crop of one 11 good-sized lizards, 3 serpents as long as his arm, 11 small tortoises ("many of which were about 2 in. in diameter"), and a number of insects. They are often introduced, partly domesticated, into poultry yards to rid them of rats, snakes, and other animals which devour young birds or eggs, and they rarely attack the fowls while supplied with reptiles and meat. The nest is made on trees, and is large, built of sticks and lined with wool and feathers; they lay two or three eggs. This bird in its long tarsi resembles the waders, and has been placed among them by Vieillot, and among the gallirut with the bustard by others on account of the wing spurs, terrestrial hab- its, and some details of internal structure. If a raptorial bird, as Nitzsch maintains, it comes nearer the vulture than the falcon family in the naked cheeks, loose plumage about the head, straightness and bluntness of the claws, and greater webs between the toes. A species is found in the Philippine islands, which is prob- ably distinct from the African bird. SECRETION. See GLAND. SECTOR, in geometry, the portion of the area of a circle included between two radii and an arc. The instrument called by this name is used for solving mechanically numerous ques- tions of proportions in geometry and trigono- metry. It is called by the French the compass of proportion. It is made of two strips of ivory, wood, or metal, each of them 6 in. or a foot long, and is hinged in the centre like a carpenter's rule. The pivot represents the centre of the circle, and the lines drawn from it upon the two limbs the radii. Upon these lines are drawn the several scales specially adapted to the sector. Other scales not direct- ly belonging to it may be placed in the blank spaces on the limbs. The scales for the radial lines are selected and arranged according to the particular uses for which the instrument is in- tended. They commonly consist of a line of chords by which we may protract an angle of any number of degrees, find the degrees cor- responding to any arc, &c. ; a scale of equal parts, which affords the means when the limbs are opened to the proper extent of finding with a pair of dividers a third proportional to two given lines, or a fourth to three given lines, &c. ; also lines of sines, secants, tangents, and polygons. The sector is a convenient in- strument in plotting for giving without calcula- tion angles and the lengths of required lines ; but all instruments are necessarily imperfect, and since the introduction of logarithmic tables this one is little used. An instrument called the astronomical or equatorial sector is used for taking the difference of right ascensions and declinations of stars ; and the zenith sector is used in trigonometrical surveys to determine the zenith distances of stars whose declinations differ little from the latitude of the observer. SECULAR GAMES, in Roman history, games celebrated at long and irregular intervals. Un- der the republic they were known as the Ta- rentine games from a place in the Campus Martins, called Tarentum, where they were celebrated, and appear to have been instituted about the time of the consul Valerius Publico- la. Nothing is known of their origin beyond the fact that they were celebrated in honor of Pluto and Proserpine for the purpose of avert- ing from the state some great calamity. Down to the time of Augustus they were held but three times; they were revived by that em- peror in 17 B. C. with considerable pomp, occupying three days and nights, and being accompanied by sacrifices to Jupiter, Juno, and all the superior deities. For this occasion Horace wrote his Carmen Sceculare. The sec- ular games were celebrated in the reign of Claudius in A. I >. 47, in that of Domitian in 88, and in that of Philip in 248. SECULARISM. See HOLYOAKE, GEORGE JACOB. sKU'.MU'S, Johannes. See JOHANNES SECUN- DU8. SKDAIXE, Mlthel Jean, a French dramatist, born in Paris, July 4, 1719, died there, May 17, 1797. He was a stone cutter, but became known in 175fi by his comic opera Le diable d quatre, for which Philidor composed the mu- sic. Among his other pieces, set to music by Gr6try and others, was Richard C&ur de Lion (1784). His best comedy, Le philosophe ant le savoir (1765), was revived in 1875, at the Theatre Francais.