780 DECLARATION-DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. as it is the latter who fixes the whole of the intonation, modulation, and phrasing, and also the tempo and expression, and who not unfrequently sacrifices the correctness of the D. to the charm of some peculiar melodic phrase or pleasing rhythm, or a vocal musical embellishment. Declara'tion, in Common Law, is the pleading in which the plaintiff in an action at law sets forth his case against the defendant. If the plaintiff fails to declare within a certain time the defendant may obtain judgment of Non Pros. The term is used in other significations also, such as D. of trust; D. of uses; D. of evidence, etc. the following day it was resolved that each colony should have one vote only; and, after a lapse of nearly two yrs., on July 2, 1776, it was further resolved, "That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States," etc. Two days afterward, on the FOURTH OF JULY, SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX-that memorable epoch-the whole D. of I. having been agreed upon, it was embodied in the following terms, and read publicly to the people amid the loudest rejoicings: DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. In Congress, July 4, 1776. Declara'tion, in lieu of an oath. . Quakers, Moravians, and Separatists, who object to swear on religious grounds, The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of have been permitted by several statutes to substitute a simple D., or affirmation, as it is called, for an oath. America. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected Independence Hall, Philadelphia, as it appears at the Present Time. Declara'tion, Dy'ing. The rule that secondary or hearsay evidence is inadmissible suffers an exception in the case of a declaration made by a person under the conviction of his impending death, and who does not survive the trial. Such declarations are of peculiar value for the ends of justice, where the party emitting them dies of injuries which are the subject of the prosecution. In cases of murder the D. D. of the sufferer as to the circumstances of the crime is always admitted as evidence on the trial of the prisoner, provided it was deliberately emitted while the deceased was in possession of his faculties, and that it is proved by credible witnesses. Declara'tion of Independ'ence. On Monday, Sept. 5, 1774, there were assembled at Carpenter's Hall, in the city of Philadelphia, a number of gentlemen chosen by the several colonies in N. Am., for the purpose of discussing certain grievances suffered at the hands of the mother-country. On them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that when any form of government becomes to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundadestructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or tion on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide DECLENSION-DECORATED STYLE. new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws, for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless the people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the danger of invasion from without and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary power. He has made judges depend on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislature. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation, For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States: offenses: For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: For imposing taxes on us without our consent: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: For transporting us beyond the seas, to be tried for pretended For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarg ing its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the powers of our governments: For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the work of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. ren. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethWe have warned them from time to time of attempts, made by their legislature, to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind-enemies in war-in peace, friends, We, therefore, the representatives of the U. S. of Am., in general congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions: Do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States. That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine 781 Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. MASSACHUSETTS BAY. John Adams, RHODE ISLAND. Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery. CONNECTICUT. Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott. NEW YORK. William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris. NEW JERSEY. Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark. PENNSYLVANIA. Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross. NEW HAMPSHIRE. Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton. DELAWARE. Cæsar Rodney, MARYLAND. Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton. VIRGINIA. George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton. NORTH CAROLINA. William Hooper, SOUTH CAROLINA. Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton. GEORGIA. Button Gwinnet, Declen'sion, a grammatical term applied to the system of modification, called cases, which nouns, pronouns, and adjec tives undergo in many languages. How the words D. (Lat. declinatio, a declining, or leaning away") and Case (Lat. casas, "a fall") came to be applied to this species of inflection has never been made altogether clear. The relations in which one thing stands to other things may be expressed in either of two ways. Some languages make use of separate words, called prepositions; in others, the relations are expressed by changes in the termination of the name of the thing. Thus, in Latin, reg being the root or crude form of the word for "king," regs, or rex, is the word in the nominative case, signifying "a king," as subject or agent; regis, in the genitive case, "of a king," regi, in the dative, "to a king, "etc. Declina'tion, the angular distance of a heavenly body from the equator of the heavens. It corresponds to latitude on the surface of the earth. (See RIGHT-ASCENSION AND DECLINATION.) Also, in terrestrial magnetism, it is the angle which the magnetic meridian makes with the astronomical meridian. Declina'tion Needle. When a magnetic needle is sus pended or made to rest on a point so as to be free to move in a horizontal plane, it finds its position of rest in a line joining two fixed points on the horizon; and when made to leave that position, after several oscillations, it returns to it again. At certain places on the earth's surface these two points are the N. and S. points of the horizon; but generally, though near, they do not coincide with these. A vertical plane passing through the points on the horizon indicated by the needle is called the magnetic meridian, in the same way that a similar plane passing through the N. and S. points is known as the astronomical meridian of the place. Decoc'tion, the term applied in pharmacy to the solution procured by boiling an organic substance with water. Decolorim'eter, an instrument for determining the power of portions of bone-black or animal charcoal to abstract coloring matter. Decomposi'tion, a term employed in Chem. to signify the separation of more simple substances from a compound. Thus, when the red oxide of mercury is heated, it suffers D., and is resolved into mercury and oxygen; and water, when subjected to a current of voltaic electricity, is decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen. Decompound', compounded of what is already a com Edwards, from the latter part of the 13th till near the end of the 14th c., Gothic architecture may be said to have been in full bloom in England. It attained perfection somewhat earlier in France and Germany, and somewhat later in Scotland, and consequently the buildings on the Continent which correspond to what is called the D. S. in England belong, for the most part, to the beginning, and those in Scotland, for the most part, to the end, of the 14th c. The D. S. arose so gradually out of the style which preceded it, and merged so gradually into that which followed it, that it is not wonderful that different periods of duration should be assigned to it by different writers. The longest, probably, is that mentioned by Britton, from 1272 to 1461; and the shortest by Rickman, from 1307 to 1392. In fixing on the middle of the 14th c. as its highest point, however, they are all pretty much agreed, and the same agreement is exhibited in recognizing it as the most perfect of the Gothic styles. The essential element of this style is the pointed arch. The spire, also, became of great importance, forming one of its chief characteristics. In the finer examples it is octagonal and very pointed, either plain or ribbed, sometimes pierced, sometimes crocketed, and almost invariably bearing a finial. Buttresses and flying buttresses also form a prominent feature, being somewhat massive and heavy at first, but gradually becoming more and more elegant as the D. S. approached perfection. A great elegance and richness pervade this period, distinguishing it from all its predecessors. The clustered columns comprising the columnar piers are more elaborate and generally placed diagonally. The paneled walls, with their niches, tabernacles, canopies, and screens, highly decorated, the flying buttresses enriched with pinnacles and tracery, the corbeled battlements and turrets, and the balustrades intricately carved and pierced, are also marked characteristics of this period. Decora'tion, a medal, cross, or honor, bestowed for distinguished military or other service. Nearly every modern nation has one or more Ds. Decora'tion Day, the anniversary on which the graves of soldiers in the U. S. are decorated with flowers. It is observed on the 30th of May throughout the Northern States, and is much cherished by the Amer. people. The Southern States observe April 27 as the day for visiting and adorning with flowers the graves of those who fell in the war of secession; in fact, the custom is one of Southern origin. Decoy'ing of Chil'dren. The crime of stealing human creatures, the plagium of the Roman law, is severely punished by the legislation of every civilized country. In countries where slavery does not exist the theft of a human adult is a crime which can scarcely occur. Where a freeman is wrongfully captured or detained, the crime is not theft, but wrongful imprisonment, which will be dealt with by the criminal law as an injury to the public, while at the same time the individual will be entitled to recover damages for the injury which he has personally sustained. Formerly it was regarded 93 treason to the king, inasmuch as it was a wrongful detaining of his free liegemen without his license or commission, and as such was punishable with death. Decrepita'tion is the term applied to the crackling sound heard when a substance like common salt is thrown into a fire. A series of minute explosions occur, owing to the water between the plates of the crystalline particles becoming expanded by the heat, and ultimately bursting them. Decrescen'do, in Mus., is the reverse of crescendo, viz., a gradual diminishing of the sound. The executing of the D. is very difficult, whether on one or more notes. Like the crescendo, it is also frequently combined with a slight ritardando, especially in descending passages. It is frequently marked thus Decre'tals. The body of the canon law consists, (1) of the Decretalium, a collection made by Gratian, a Benedictine monk, after the middle of the 12th c., in imitation of the Roman Pandects, and drawn from the opinions of the fathers, popes, and church-councils; (2) of the Decretalia, collected by Pope Gregory IX., nearly a c. later, from the decretal rescripts or epistles of the popes, as the code of Justinian was from the constitutions of the emperors. To these additions were made by several succeeding popes. Decre'tals, False, a collection of papal letters, canons, etc., chiefly forgeries, ascribed to Isidorus Mercator, and dating from the first half of the 9th c. The object of the fraud, first established by German Protestant critics in the 16th c., was to exalt ecclesiastical above secular dominion; and upon it, as some Protestant historians assert, is based the claim of papal supremacy. Dec'taun, a town of India. It is 1,881 ft. above the sea; pop. 6,000. Decur'rent, to run down, or running downward. In Bot., said of a leaf whose base extends downward along the stem. See LEAVES. Ded'ham, a town 10 m. from Boston, Mass.; pop. 7,123. It is the cap. of Norfolk Co. Dedication. It was customary from very early periods to prefix to a book a complimentary address to some particular person. The custom became perverted, and Johnson, Corneille, and others wrote their Ds. for patronage and money. Deduc'tion, a particular kind of reasoning or inference. In ordinary language, to deduce means to trace one thing to another as its cause, to show that one proposition follows from some other proposition or propositions. In Logic, its signification is more definite. It is usual to oppose D. to INDUCTION, (q. v.,) and to say that the latter consists in reasoning from particulars to generals, the former in reasoning from generals to particulars. In fact, however, every step in D. is also an induction. Dee, the name of two rivers in Scotland. The larger and more important rises in five wells 4,000 ft. above the sea, near the top of Braeriach Mountain, in the neighborhood of Cairntoul and Ben Macdhui, and ends in the German Ocean, at the harbor of Aberdeen. In this course, 96 m. in all, it receives a number of tributaries-the Lui, Muic, Feugh, etc. The basin of the D., which is about 1,000 sq. m. in area, consists of granite and gneiss in nearly equal areas. In the gneiss occur many beds of primitive limestone, and some masses of trap-rock and serpentine. On the D. are Balmoral Castle and several villages much resorted to in summer. Dee, a river in England, 80 m. 1., draining parts of the shires of Merioneth, Denbigh, and Flint, in Wales, and Salop and the W. of Cheshire. Near Trevor it is crossed by the Ellesmere Canal, on an aqueduct 1,007 ft. 1. and 120 h.; and also by the stone viaduct of the Chester and Shrewsbury R.R., of 19 arches, each 90 ft. span, and 150 ft. h. Below Trevor the D. winds first S.-E. and then N.-E., and N. to Ches. ter, which city it nearly encircles. At Chester it is 100 yds. w., and runs alongside marshes in an artificial tidal canal 9 m. 1., and admitting ships of 600 tons. It ends in the Irish Sea, in a tidal estuary 9 m. 1. and 3 to 6 m. w., and forming at high water a noble arm of the sea, but at low water a dreary waste of sand and ooze, with the river flowing through it in a narrow stream. Dee, (JOHN,) a celebrated astrologer and mathematician, the son of Rowland D., "gentleman-sewer" to Henry VIII., b. in London 1527, and educated at St. John's Coll., Cambridge. After residing for some time at the University of Louvain he went, in 1550, to Paris, where, at the Coll. of Rheims, he read lectures on the Elements of Euclid with very great success. In 1551 he returned to England, was presented by Cecil to Edward VI., and pensioned; but during the reign of Mary he nearly lost his life. He again set out for the Continent in 1564, ostensibly for the purpose of presenting to the Emperor Maximilian a book which he had previously dedicat. ed to him. Lilly, however, in his Memoirs, affirms that he DEED-DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS. acted as Queen Elizabeth's "intelligencer" or spy, and this theory is probably the true one; d. 1608. Deed, in Law, is a formal written expression of something done by the party or parties from whom it proceeds. The term is applied to almost every form of legal writing, and will consequently be treated under various heads. Deems, (CHARLES F., D.D.,) an Amer. minister and educator, b. 1820; was professor in and Pres. of North Carolina University, and of Randolph, Greensborough, and Centenary Colls., pastor of the "Church of the Strangers," New York, and editor of Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine. Author of Chips and Chunks for Every Fireside. D. Nov. 18, 1893. Deem'ster, Demp'ster, or Doom'ster, the name of an officer formerly attached to the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, who pronounced the doom or sentence of condemned persons. The office was held along with that of executioner. Deep Riv'er Coal-beds, a coal-bearing stratum in the valley of the Deep River, N. C., of the Triassic and not of the true Carboniferous age; area over 40 sq. m. Deep Sea Dredg'ing has for its object the exploration of the bottom of the ocean, and the ascertaining what forms of life inhabit great depths. The dredge used by naturalists consists of a narrow rectangular frame, with two scraping edges, the ends of the frame being of round iron, and each supporting a forked iron arm, each fork being bent round the end piece of the frame at the corners, so as to turn upon it with freedom. The other end of each arm is furnished with a ring, to which the guide-rope is attached. To the back of the frame a bag of strong, open meshes of twine is fastened, by means of holes drilled through the back part of the scrapers, close to the edge, and a plan is adopted for the purpose of preventing the bag from turning over the mouth of the dredge during its descent. The drag-rope is usually attached to one of the arms of the dredge, while the other arm is fastened to it by a smaller rope. In very deep water heavy weights are used to sink the rope and to keep the dredge down upon the bottom. Of late yrs. D. S. D. has been pursued in various seas and lakes pertaining to the eastern hemisphere, as well as to the Amer. continent. The results of these operations are of great moment to science and natural philosophy. Deep Sea Fish. Animal life is abundant near the surface and also at the greatest sea depths yet examined. Fish have been brought up by the dredge from a depth of 2,900 fathoms, or 14,500 ft.; but in all cases the habits of the latter showed that they subsisted at the bottom. According to Dr. J. Gwyn Jeffries and Prof. Alexander Agassiz, the results of the late dredging expeditions have strongly enforced the conclusion that there is no animated intermediate zone, but that the surface fauna is really limited to a comparatively narrow belt in depth. How the D. S. F. (of which over 100 species have been found) subsist, how they obtain their light -for most of them have well-developed eyes-has not been determined. 783 The roughness of the surface of such a rope, together with its size, caused excessive friction in its passage through the water. Also the water counterbalanced all but a fourth part of the weight of the rope, leaving but this fraction and the weight of the lead to sink it. But the weight of the lead remained constant, while the resistance from friction increased as the length of rope below the surface increased. A point was therefore at last reached, and that at no great depth, where this frictional resistance counterbalanced the sinking power of the lead. Thereafter the rope sank only by its own residual weight, which was a fourth part of its weight in air, as previously stated. As a consequence the drag on the rope, Section of Sigsbee's Deep-Sea Sounding-rod. Deep Sea Sound'ings, with a view to ascertaining the depths of the oceans and seas at various points, have been pursued for yrs.; but it is supposed that previous to the experiments of Capt. Ross, in 1840, 6,000 ft. only had been attained. In 1843, however, Lieut.-Commander (later Admiral) Davis, then belonging to the United States Coast Survey, made successful soundings off Block Island in water about 12,600 ft. deep. In 1847 Capt. Stanley, of the English navy, reported soundings between the coasts of Africa and S. Am. at 15,000 ft., but something not altogether satisfactory appears to have been connected with the experiment. Vast weights are used, and great difficulties experienced from currents in making these soundings; but the general summing up of their results seems to be that the North Atlantic is a com- which was all the sounder had to go by, continued unchanged paratively shallow basin, although it has registered 23,250 ft. even after the lead had reached the bottom, and he could connear Cape Sable. In the Indian Ocean 12,000 ft. has been tinue paying out line indefinitely, until either his supply or found, and in the vicinity of the equator in the South Atlantic his patience became exhausted. Before long it became ev9,000 ft. The greatest recorded and well authenticated depth ident that nothing of value could result from such methods. reached in any case has not yet exceeded 26,850 ft., but this Then naval officers conceived a plan charming in its simplicmust not by any means be taken as the greatest depth attain-ity. Wind a known quantity of small string on a reel, atable. Probably no man ever spent much time on any body of tach to it an old cannon-ball, drop it overboard, and let it go water, the bottom of which was invisible, without wondering as fast as it chose to the bottom. Then cut the twine, meashow deep it really was. Perhaps as a manifestation of this phase of human nature-at all events, as a fact-efforts to ascertain the depth of the deep sea have been long continued and persistent. A heavy lead and plenty of line seemed to the pioneers in this work all that was required. But it was found that a rope of considerable strength and consequent thickness was needed to haul up the sinker from any depth. ure what was left, deduct that from what was on the reel in the first place, and lo! the problem was solved. It was supposed a thread even would suffice, since the weight was to be allowed to sink at its own sweet will. But such was found not to be the case. The drag of the twine through the water was found to impose considerable strain upon it, and cord capable of sustaining 60 lbs. came to be used. It was in this manner that soundings for the second Atlantic cable From the great pressure to which the floor of the ocean is were obtained. Still, though employing this method in sub- subject-over three tons to the square inch at 3,000 fathoms stance, Lieut. Berryman, in the U. S. brig Dolphin, got no-it might be inferred that the bottom would be very hard. bottom in the Atlantic at 6,500 fathoms, or 39,000 ft.; Capt. Such is not the case. The great depths of the Atlantic rest Denham, in H.M.S. Herald, reported bottom in the South Atlan-uniformly upon a soft ooze very smooth and unctuous to the tic at 7,666 fathoms-46,000 ft.; and Lieut. Parker, in the touch, and not unlike powdered rotten-stone in color. U. S. frigate Congress, near the same place, ran out 8,333 Deer, a Linnæan genus of ruminant quadrupeds, now confathoms 50,000 ft.-without finding bottom. All these stituting the family Cervidae, which measurements greatly exceed the depth of any part of the some naturalists divide into a number Atlantic. But scientific men like facts-demonstrated facts. of genera, while others still regard it What assurance was there that bottom had been reached un- as forming only one, the distinctions less a sample of the bottom was brought up? At this stage of between its groups not seeming to the question, in 1854, John M. Brooke, then a past midship- them sufficiently marked or imporman in the U. S. navy, produced an invention which marked tant for generic characters. D. are an era in deep-sea sounding. It has been improved in detail animals of graceful form, combining since, but its mechanical principle is to-day the principle of much compactness and strength with every successful deep-sea "sounding-rod." The best sounding- slenderness of limb and fleetness. rod (as these devices are termed) of to-day is doubtless the They use their powerful horns for Brooke device as modified by Commander Sigsbee. The de- weapons of defense, and sometimes of fects of the original Brooke sounding-rod were that occasion- offense; but in general they trust to flight for their safety. They have a long neck, a small head, which they carry high, large ears, and large full eyes. Sigsbee's Deep-Sea Sounding-rod-Shot Detached. ally the shot failed to detach, involving the loss of line, sounding-rod, and its appurtenances, and that the sample of bottom brought up, if any, was undesirably small. Sigsbee's modification may be described as follows: The sinker is an 8-in. cannon-shot weighing 60 lbs. A hole runs through it large enough to admit the sounding-rod. Upon the shot are cast two ears, like the ears on a pail, to which a wire bail, just like a pail handle, is attached. The sounding-line is fastened to the ring shown near the top of the cuts. The sounding-rod is a brass tube about one eighth of an inch thick, quite sharp on the lower edge. It operates thus: The shot is placed upon the sounding-rod. As long as the weight of the shot is borne by the sounding-line the hook will sustain the shot. But the moment that strain is relieved by the shot striking the bottom the hook doubles under and releases the wire handle of the shot. At the same time the weight of the shot buries the sharp lower edge of the sounding-rod in the bottom. This forces up a valve and a portion of the bottom enters. At the first movement toward reeling in the line the shot slips off the sounding-rod and remains behind, and the valve at the bottom of the sounding-rod closes, imprisoning a sample of the bottom. This device has been tried many hundreds of times in great depths, and it has rarely failed to detach the shot as well as bring up a liberal sample of the bottom. Red Deer. Deer, or Deir, Old, a village and parish in the N.-E. of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Here are vestiges of a Cistercian monastery founded about the yr. 1219 by William Cumyn, Earl of Buchan, on the site of a church believed to have been planted by St. Columba and his disciple, St. Orostan, about the yr. 580; pop. 5,085. Deer'field, a town of Franklin Co., Mass., on the Connecticut River R.R., 33 m. N. of Springfield; pop. 2,910. The township contains the village of South Deerfield, and was the scene of several contests with the Indians in colonial times. Among these may be mentioned the "Bloody Brook Massacre" (1675) and the burning of the village by the French and Indians under De Rouville, (1703.) Old Deerfield has a beautiful soldier's monument, and there is at South Deerfield a marble monument commemorative of the Bloody Brook disaster. D. has an academy. Deer-grass, or Meadow Beauty, (Rhexia Virginica,) a genus of an Asiatic plant of the order Melastomaceae, found chiefly in New England. It is noted for the beauty of its flowers, which have bright purple petals, and thrives best on meadow land. It is said that there are but eight species of the order in the U. S. Deer'mouse, or Jump'ing Mouse, (Zapus hudsonius,) a genus of Amer. rodent quadrupeds allied to mice and to jerboas, and differing from the gerbils of the warm parts of the Old World only in the greater length of their hind legs, the nakedness of the tail, and the existence of a very small tooth in front of the molars of the upper jaw. The D. or Jumping Mouse of northern U. S. and British Am., including Labrador, and often seen in summer and autumn, is a beautiful, agile little creature, of the size of a mouse, with a very long tail and very long slender hind legs. It is capable of taking leaps of 4 or 5 yds. It burrows, and passes the winter in a state of lethargy. Labrador Jumping Deer Park, a twp. of Orange Co., N. Y. It is bounded on the S.-W. by the Delaware River, is drained by the Neversink River, and intersected by the Erie R.R.; pop., including PORT JERVIS, (q. v.,) 11,483. Deer-stalking is the art of following the red deer by cautious maneuvering for the purpose of shooting it with the rifle; and, as practiced in the Highlands of Scotland, is perhaps unequaled as a sport in fatigue as well as in excitement. The extensive tracts of hill-land over which deer roam, and on which they are stalked, are termed "deer forests," few of which, however, notwithstanding, can boast of a single tree. This sport is more highly esteemed, and greater sums are paid for it, by its devotees, than for any other in Scotland. This arises chiefly from two causes: (1) from the intense excitement occasioned in the pursuit of the red deer, and (2) from the comparative scarceness of good forests. D. demands many expensive accessories, among which may be mentioned deer-hounds to pursue and bring to bay wounded game; one or more guides to accompany the stalker; and hill-men to drive the deer, when that method of obtaining shots is |