its purity: these are the effluvia constantly passing off from the surface of animal bodies, and the combustion of candles, and other burning substances. On going into a bed-room in a morning, soon after the occupant has left his bed, though he be in perfect health, and habitually cleanly in his person, the sense of smelling never fails to be offended with the odor of animal effluvia with which the atmosphere is charged. There is another case, perhaps still more striking, when a person, fresh from the morning air, enters a coach in which several persons have been closestowed during a long night. He who has once made the experiment, will never voluntarily repeat it. The simple expedient of keeping down both windows but a single half inch would prevent many of the colds, and even fevers, which this injurious mode of travelling often produces. If, under such circumstances, the air is vitiated, how much more injuriously must its quality be depreciated when several persons are confined to one room, where there is an utter neglect of cleanliness; in which cooking, washing, and all other domestic affairs, are necessarily performed; where the windows are immovable, and the door is never opened but while some one is passing through it! It may be taken as a wholesome general rule, that whatever produces a disagreeable impression on the sense of smelling is unfavorable to health. That sense was doubtless intended to guard us against the dangers to which we are liable from vitiation of the atmosphere. If we have, by the same means, a high sense of gratification from other objects, it ought to excite our admiration of the beneficence of the Deity in thus making our senses serve the double purpose of affording us pleasure and security; for the latter end might just as effectually have been answered by our being only susceptible of painful impressions. To keep the atmosphere of our houses free from contamination, it is not sufficient that we secure a frequent renewal of the air: all matters which can injure its purity must be carefully removed. Flowers in water, and living plants in pots, greatly injure the purity of the air during the night, by giving out large quantities of an air (carbonic acid) similar to that which is separated from the lungs by breathing, which, as before stated, is highly noxious. On this account, they should never be kept in bed-rooms. There are instances of persons, who have incautiously gone to sleep in a close room in which there has been a large, growing plant, having been found dead in the morning, as effectually suffocated as if there had been a charcoal stove in the room. A constant renewal of the air is absolutely necessary to its purity; for, in all situations, it is suffering either by its vital part being absorbed, or by impure vapors being disengaged and dispersed through it. Ventilation, therefore, resolves itself into the securing a constant supply of fresh air. In the construction of houses, this great object has been too generally overlooked, when, by a little contrivance in the arrangement of windows and doors, a current of air might, at any time, be made to pervade every room of a house of any dimensions. Rooms cannot be well ventilated that have no outlet for the air: for this reason, there should be a chimney to every apartment. The windows should be capable of being opened; and they should, if possible, be situated on the side of the room opposite to, and farthest from, the fire-place, that the air may traverse the whole space of the apartment in its way to the chimney. Fireplaces in bed-rooms should not be stopped up with chimney-boards. The windows should be thrown open for some hours every day, to carry off the animal effluvia which are necessarily separating from the bed-clothes, and which should be assisted in their escape by the bed being shaken up, and the clothes spread abroad, in which state they should remain as long as possible. This is the reverse of the usual practice of making the bed, as it is called, in the morning, and tucking it up close, as if with the determination of preventing any purification from taking place. Attention to this direction, with regard to airing the bed-clothes and bed, after being slept in, is of the greatest importance to persons of weak health. Instances have been known in which restlessness, and an inability to find refreshment from sleep, would come on in such individuals, when the linen of their beds had been unchanged for eight or ten days. In one case, of a gentleman of a very irritable habit, who suffered from excessive perspiration during the night, and who had taken much medicine without relief, he observed that, for two or three nights after he had fresh sheets put upon his bed, he had no sweating; and that, after that time, he never awoke but that he was literally swimming, and that the sweats seemed to increase with the length of time he slept in the same sheets. Various means are had recourse to at times, with the intention of correcting disagreeable smells, and of purifying the air of sickrooms. Diffusing the vapor of vinegar through the air, by plunging a hot poker into a vessel containing it, burning aromatic vegetables, smoking tobacco, and exploding gunpowder, are the means usually employed. All these are useless. The explosion of gunpowder may, indeed, do something, by displacing the air within the reach of its influence; but, then, unfortunately, an air is produced, by its combustion, that is as offensive, and equally unfit to support life as any air it can be used to remove. These expedients only serve to disguise the really offensive condition of the atmosphere. The best means of purifying the air of a chamber which is actually occupied by a sick person, is by changing it in such a manner that the patient shall not be directly exposed to the draughts or currents. Chemistry, however, has furnished the means of purifying the air of chambers in which persons have been confined with contagious diseases, or in which bad air is generated in other ways, so as to destroy the noxious or offensive power of the effluvia generated in such situations, and thus of preventing its injurious influence. (See Chlorine.) No fumigation will be of any avail in purifying stagnant air, or air that has been breathed till it has been deprived of its vital part: such air must be driven out, when its place should be immediately supplied by the fresh, pure atmosphere. The readiest means of changing the air of an apartment is by lighting a fire in it, and then throwing open the door and windows: this will set the air in motion, by establishing a current up the chimney. The air which has been altered by being breathed is essential to vegetable life; and plants, aided by the rays of the sun, have the power to absorb it, while they themselves at the same time give out pure vital air. This process, going on by day, the reverse of that described before as taking place during the night, is continually in operation, so that the purification of the atmosphere can only be prevented by its being preserved in a stagnant ry to carry this act of illusion to a high degree of perfection. They have also shown that the sounds are formed by the same organs as the emissions of sound commonly-the larynx, the palate, the tongue, the lips, &c.; that the sound is not produced during inspiration, but proceeds, as usual, during expiration, with a less opened mouth. The art of the ventriloquist consists merely in this after drawing a long breath, he breathes it out slowly and gradually, dexterously dividing the air, and diminishing the sound of the voice by the muscles of the larynx and the palate: besides this, he moves his lips as little as possible, and, by various contrivances, diverts the attention of his auditors. Alexander (born in Paris, 1797) has lately distinguished himself by his skill in this art. The ancients also had ventriloquists. The Greeks called them engastrimanteis, and considered their art the work of demons. VENUE; the neighborhood from whence juries are to be summoned for trial of causes. In local actions, as of trespass and ejectment, the venue is to be from the neighborhood of the place where the lands in question lie; and, in all real actions, the venue must be laid in the county where the property is for which the action is brought. VENUS; the Roman name of the goddess of love, called by the Greeks Aphrodite. The poets mention an elder Venus, the daughter of Uranus, and a younger, the daughter of Jupiter and Dione; but the events in the history of the two are often confounded. From these events, and the places where Venus was particularly worshipped, she received her various epithets. The elder Venus is called Venus Urania (heavenly Venus), to indicate that she is the goddess of love refined from sensuality, and is thus distinguished from the younger Venus, or earthly love (Venus pandemos, vulgaris). Undoubtedly the notion of the Asiatic goddess of nature, representing the female, generative principle, came from Syria and Phoenicia, and was developed and modified by the Greeks. According to the Greek fable, Venus originated from the foam of the sea; hence she was called Aphrodite, Anadyomene (q. v.), and represented sometimes with a sea-green veil. Great power over the sea was also ascribed to her; and mariners implored her protection. The myrtle was sacred to her, because she hid herself behind such a tree, when she stepped, naked, out of the sea, on the shore of the island of Cyth causes, VENUS VERA CRUZ. era. On this island (at present Cerigo), Venus de' Medici, in the ducal gallery of VENUS'S FLY-TRAP. (See Dionæa.) VERA CRUZ; a state of the Mexican confederacy, formed, with the states of Tabasco and Chiapa, out of the former intendancy of Vera Cruz; bounded east by the gulf of Mexico, north by the state of Tamaulipas, and west by Puebla and Mexico. It is of great importance, in consequence of its containing the harbors which form the principal means of communication between the territory of the republic and the rest of the world. The eastern part, along the coast, consists of hot and unhealthy plains, while the western part forms the declivity of the Cordilleras of Anahuac; and such is the steepness of the mountains in this part of the country, that a traveller may pass, in the course of a day, from suffocating heats to frosts, traversing, as it were, successive layers of climates. (See Mexico.) Although the soil is fertile, the state is thinly peopled, in consequence of the unhealthiness of the climate, and the preference given by the Spanish and native Mexicans to the table-land as a place of residence. It contains the volcano of Orizaba, having an elevation of 17,208 feet, and the coffer of Perote, 13,289 feet high, and familiar to The navigators as the first land seen when approaching the coast of Mexico. The mountain of Tuxtla, also within its limits, is subject to volcanic eruptions. principal towns are Vera Cruz (q. v.); Xalapa, known in commerce as the place supplying the greater part of the drug which has received its name (see Jalap), and celebrated for the genial atmosphere and beautiful country in which it is placed, with a population of 13,000 souls; Tampico, an important seaport at the mouth of a river of the same name, with 20,000 inhabitants; and Papantla, with The state has a 8000 inhabitants. population of 233,700 souls. Its chief productions are tobacco, coffee, cotton, &c. VERA CRUZ; a seaport of Mexico, in the state of the same name, on the gulf of Mexico, 200 miles east by south of Mexico; lon. 96° 9′ W.; lat. 19° 12′ N.; population, 30,000. Opposite to the town,on a small island, stands the castle of St. Juan d'Ulloa, fortified by 300 pieces of cannon. About 100 merchant vessels may anchor here, in from four to ten fathoms; but the northern winds often drive vessels on shore. The port is not commodious, being merely a bad anchorage among shallows. Vera Cruz is the great seaport of Mexico, and the place through which almost all the trade between that country and Europe and the U. States of North America is carried on. The town is situated on an arid plain, without running water, and on which the north winds, which blow with dreadful impetuosity from October to April, have formed hills of moving sand, from twenty-six to thirty-eight feet high, which change their form and situation every year. The city is handsomely and regularly built, the streets broad and straight; but its climate is hot and unhealthy, and extremely subject to the yellow fever. This dreadful distemper generally commences its ravages when the mean temperature rises to 75°. In December, January and February, when the heat remains below this limit, it generally disappears. The buildings are constructed from materials drawn from the bottom of the ocean, the habitations of the madrepores; for no rock is to be found in the environs, though freestone has now begun to be brought from Campeachy. The ascent from the city into the interior, which is a plain elevated nearly 8000 feet above the level of the ocean, is through difficult and narrow roads. It exercises the same action upon the animal economy as the hellebore, but with much greater energy. VERB (from the Latin verbum); that important part of speech in which a subject is conceived of under certain relations of time. It therefore belongs to the, so called, attributive parts of speech, or those which determine the predicate of the subject indicated by the noun. The idea of personality; the various states of time, action and passion; the ideas of singular and plural, and numerous shades of signification connected with it, render the verb one of the most interesting subjects of investigation to the philologist. What can be finer and more delicate than the structure of the Greek verb? what more curious to a man whose native language belongs to the European stock, than the verb of the North American Indian? (See Indian Languages, in appendix to vol. vi.) Again-what wonderful modifications do we meet with in the Hebrew verb! How striking is the Sanscrit verb! The verb of the different nations shows us, more than any other part of speech, the different division of ideas, if we may call it so, which takes place in different languages; for instance, in most languages known to us, the idea that something is affected by the action of something else, either has not a peculiar form of expression (this is generally the case in English), or is expressed by the accusative of the VERATRINE; a white, inodorous sub- object, that is, by a change in the name of stance, very sharp to the taste, without the object, e. g. Filius amat patrem. But any bitterness, found in the seed of the there are languages in which this idea is veratrum sabatilla, the V. album, or white expressed by a change in the subject, hellebore, and in the bulbs of the colchi- which acts; and this is as logical a way cum autumnale, or meadow saffron. It as the other. An object may be confuses at 122°, becoming a white mass, like ceived merely in reference to time, or in a wax. At a higher degree of temperature, peculiar state of action or passion. The it decomposes, and affords all the prod- former mode of conceiving them is the ucts of vegeto-animal substances. It is basis of the verb to be (verbum substansoluble in ether and alcohol, wholly insol- tivum), which is therefore used to unite uble in cold water: boiling water scarce- the subject and predicate (e. g. I am unly dissolves the one thousandth part; yet well), and becomes an auxiliary verb. In this small quantity communicates to it a the case of those verbs which indicate a very sensible sharpness of taste. In a peculiar state of the subject, together with degree, it possesses alkaline properties, the idea of time, the state may have referchanges litmus paper, reddened by an ence to the subject alone (“I sit," "I lie”), acid, blue, and saturates the acids, with or, at the same time, express a relation of which it forms uncrystallizable salts. Con- action or passion between the subject and centrated nitric acid decomposes it with- an object. The first kind of verbs are out giving it a red color. According to called intransitive or neuter (because they VERB VERDITER. neither act nor suffer). To them belongs with reference to another time or action (e. g. "I had done it when he came"); to VOL. XII. 46 verb, or by both. Where there is no person, the verb becomes impersonal (e.g. "it thunders"). Some languages go further, and designate also the genus of the person acting or being in a certain state, and express in the verb whether this person is male or female; so that, where the Latins have but one form for amat, they would have two forms. To set forth all the various forms of a verb used for the designation of the manifold relations which it is fitted to express, is called conjugating it. The conjugation is regular or irregular; the first when it conforms to certain rules existing in the language, the latter if the verb deviates from these. Most of the irregular verbs, however, can be brought again under certain rules, and so far become again regular. As respects their origin, verbs are primitive or derivative. To the latter class belong those by which the state is designated as modified by circumstances (e. g. dictitare, from dico, in Latin; spötteln, from spotten, in German). Often, however, the verb is derived from some adjective or substantive. VERBENALIA. (See Vervain.) VERDICT. (See Jury, vol. vii, p. 287.) VERDIGRIS; an impure acetate of copper, being a mixture of the acetates and the carbonates of copper, and the hydrated oxide of copper. The best varieties approximate to the following composition:— Acetic acid, French. English. 29.62 44.25 25.51 2.0 ... 0.62 VERDITER is a blue pigment, obtained by adding chalk or whiting to the solution of copper in aquafortis. It is prepared as follows:-A quantity of whiting is put into a tub, and upon this the solution of copper is poured. The mixture is to be stirred every day for some hours together, till the liquor loses its color. The liquor is then to be poured off, and more solution of copper is to be added. This is to be repeated till the whiting has color. Then it is to proper acquired the be spread on large pieces of chalk, and dried in the sun. It consists of 30.00 3.33 7.00 9.33 50.00 |