Part 53

_James’s Powder_ is composed chiefly of antimony, and similar to that which is sold in the shops by the name of Antimonial Powder. As a horse medicine, the latter is as useful and efficacious as James’s Powder. It is an excellent medicine in fevers of every kind; and, though usually given in the small dose of a scruple, or half-a-drachm, may be exhibited with perfect safety, and better effect in a much larger quantity. White says, he never gave less than two drachms, and sometimes three; and has seen even one ounce given at a dose without the least inconvenience. It appears to act on the skin like tartar emetic, promoting insensible perspiration; its effect is not so certain. It is sometimes joined with opium, camphor, nitre, or ginger, according to the nature of the disease: with ginger it is prescribed for horses that are hide-bound; but this compound is not proper in fevers, or any complaint arising from inflammation. It is most commonly given with nitre and camphor; and some practitioners prefer it, as a fever medicine, to tartar (emetic).—_White._

JAPAN, _v._ To varnish, to embellish with gold and raised figures; to black shoes.

JAR, _v._ To strike together with a kind of short rattle; to strike or sound untuneably.

JAUNDICE, _s._ A distemper from obstructions of the glands of the liver.

A peculiar yellowness of the membranes of the eyes and mouth sometimes attends certain disorders, which have on that account been named yellows, or jaundice. Those disorders consist in great heaviness of the head, a peculiar languor and disinclination to motion, yellowness, or a yellowish redness of the inner surface of the eyelids, while little or no dung is voided, and that little has mucus or slime on its surface; the urine is scanty, and high-coloured; in short there is great torpor in all the organs of the body. This disorder generally happens towards autumn, or the latter part of summer, and may be caused, in some measure, by the heat of the weather, as well as by feeding immoderately, especially upon hay, when it happens to be remarkably good and sweet, such hay always tempting a horse to eat immoderately: but it is produced by immoderate feeding upon any kind of hay, or even of corn. By this excess of food, assisted by the heat of the weather, the stomach is weakened, and the bowels become torpid; the large bowels are in consequence loaded with excrement, and the mesenteric veins with blood. Hence the liver also becomes loaded with blood, and performs its office imperfectly; the bile therefore seems to be forced back upon the circulation, or re-absorbed, and thus the blood and all the secretions are tinged of a yellow colour. The high colour of the membrane of the eye is caused by the determination of blood to the head, when the blood is forced into vessels which in health convey only a colourless and transparent fluid; and as the whole mass of blood is loaded with bile, it appears in those minute vessels of a yellow colour: and generally that yellowness in the membranes under the eyelids approaches towards redness, or the colour of an orange. Bleeding is the first remedy in this disorder; nor should blood be taken off in small quantities at a time, from a fear of increasing the animal’s apparent weakness, which depends more upon the brain being oppressed with blood than any thing else, but in a full quantity, that is, to the extent of from one to two gallons, or until the horse becomes faint. The bowels should then be unloaded by means of clysters and a purgative ball.

JAW, _s._ The bone of the mouth in which the teeth are fixed; the mouth.

JAY, (_Corvus glandarius_, LINN.; _Le Geai_, BUFF.) _s._ A bird.

This beautiful bird is not more than thirteen inches in length. Its bill is black, eyes white; the feathers on the forehead are white, streaked with black, and form a tuft which it can erect and depress at pleasure; the chin is white, and from the corners of the bill on each side proceeds a broad streak of black, which passes under the eye; the hinder part of the head, the neck, and the back, are of a light cinnamon colour; the breast is of the same colour, but lighter; lesser wing coverts bay; the belly and vent almost white; the greater wing coverts are elegantly barred with black, fine pale blue and white alternately; the greater quills are black, with pale edges, the bases of some of them white; lesser quills black; those next the body, chestnut; the rump is white; tail black, with pale brown edges; legs dirty pale brown.

The jay is a very common bird in Great Britain, and is found in various parts of Europe. It is distinguished as well for the beautiful arrangement of its colours, as for its harsh grating voice, and restless disposition. Upon seeing the sportsman, it gives by its cries the alarm of danger, and thereby defeats his aim and disappoints him. The jay builds in woods, and makes an artless nest, composed of sticks, fibres, and tender twigs; the female lays five or six eggs, of a greyish ash colour, mixed with green, and faintly spotted with brown. Mr. Pennant observes, that the young ones continue with their parents till the following spring, when they separate to form new pairs. Birds of this species live on acorns, nuts, seeds, and various kinds of fruits; they will eat eggs, and sometimes destroy young birds in the absence of the old ones. When kept in a domestic state they may be rendered very familiar, and will imitate a variety of words and sounds. We have heard one imitate the sound made by the action of a saw so exactly, that though it was on a Sunday, we could hardly be persuaded that the person who kept it, had not a carpenter at work in the house. Another, at the approach of cattle, had learned to hound a cur dog upon them, by whistling and calling upon him by his name: at last, during a severe frost, the dog was, by that means, excited to attack a cow big with calf, when the poor animal fell on the ice, and was much hurt: the jay was complained of as a nuisance, and its owner was obliged to destroy it.—_Bewick._

ICHTHYOLOGY, _s._ The doctrine of the nature of fish.

JENNET, _s._ A Spanish horse.

JERK, _s._ A smart quick lash; a sudden spring; a quick jolt that shocks or starts.

JESSES, _s._ Slips of light leather, seven or eight inches long, and a quarter of an inch wide, made fast to each of the hawk’s legs. These are to be secured to a small swivel, fixed to the end of a thong of leather, three or four feet long, called a leash, so as easily to be detached from the swivel when the hawk is required to fly. The jesses are seldom removed from the bird’s legs when once they have been put on.

JET, _s._ A very beautiful fossil of a fine deep black colour; a spout or shoot of water.

JETTY, _a._ Made of jet; black as jet.

IGNITE, _v._ To kindle, to set on fire.

IGNITIBLE, _a._ Inflammable, capable of being set on fire.

IGNITION, _s._ The act of kindling, or of setting on fire.

JIGOT, _s._ A leg; as, a jigot of mutton.

JILL, _s._ A measure of liquids.

ILIAC, _a._ Relating to the lower bowels.

IMBROWN, _v._ To make brown, to darken.

IMPING, _s._

This curious process consists in attaching to the part that remains an exact substitute for the piece lost. For this purpose the falconer is always provided with pinions, (right and left,) and with tail-feathers of hawks, or with the feathers separated from the pinion, carefully preserved and numbered, so as to prevent mistake in taking a true match for the injured feather. He then with a sharp knife gently parts the web of the feather to be repaired, at its thickest part, and cuts the shaft obliquely forward, so as not to damage the web on the opposite edge. He next cuts the substitute feather as exactly as possible at the corresponding point, and with the same slope.

For the purpose of uniting them, he is provided with an iron needle, with broad triangular points at both ends; and after wetting the needle with salt and water, he thrusts it into the centre of the pith of each part, as truly straight, and as nearly to the same length in each as may be. When this operation has been skilfully performed, the junction is so neat that an inexperienced eye would hardly discern the point of union; and as the iron rusts, from having been wetted with brine, there is little or no danger of separation.—_Sebright._

IMPOSTHUME, _s._ A collection of purulent matter in a bag or cyst.

INBRED, _a._ Produced within; hatched or generated within.

INCAGE, _v._ To coop up, to shut up; to confine in a cage, or any narrow space.

INCH, _s._ The twelfth part of a foot.

INCISION, _s._ A cut, a wound made with a sharp instrument.

INCISOR, _s._ Cutter, tooth in the forepart of the mouth.

INCORPORATE, _v._ To mingle different ingredients so as they shall make one mass; to unite, to associate, to embody.

INCUBATION, _s._ The act of sitting upon eggs to hatch them.

_Incubation._—It is probable birds are endowed with an instinctive power of regulating the necessary heat for this purpose; of course, should the heat of the air, together with the natural warmth of the body, on the close contact of the bird to the eggs, be too great, her feelings would dictate the necessity of leaving them for a time to cool. At the early period of incubation birds quit their eggs more frequently than at the time the fetus is more perfect. Yet, in the advanced state, the embryo young is not in more danger of being destroyed, if so much; for we have frequently found a living fetus in an egg that has been taken from the nest two days. If, however, the young is within a few hours of being excluded, and the egg is suffered to be some time cold, it either dies, or becomes so weak as not to be able to extricate itself from the shell. Various degrees of heat will enlarge the embryo young, but regular heat seems necessary to its production; and yet artificial heat, regulated by the brooding of a bird, will not produce young with such certainty. In Egypt, a vast quantity of eggs are hatched by artificial heat in stoves. It is probable, however, one third or one fourth miscarry. The necessary heat for this purpose is about ninety-six degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, or thirty-two of Reaumur’s scale. Birds frequently turn and change the situation of their eggs in the nest; besides this, it is possible that the moisture of the bird’s body may assist the natural growth of the fœtus and the production of the young.

The male birds of some species supply the place of the female on the nest; but then it is of short duration, and rarely, if ever, when the eggs are near hatching; at that time the female is frequently fed by the male. This is not common to all species, but very conspicuous in the rook, the pigeon, and many others. Many species of birds possess a reservoir for food, called a craw, or crop; this seems to answer the same purpose as the first stomach in ruminating animals. Here it is the food is softened and prepared for the stomach; from this reservoir it is by some ejected for the purpose of feeding their young; conspicuous in the pigeon.

The rook has a small pouch under the tongue, in which it carries food to its young. It is probable the use of the craw may be extended further than is generally imagined; for besides the common preparation of the food to assist its digestion in the stomach, there are some species that actually secrete a lacteal substance in the breeding season, which, mixing with the half-digested food, is ejected to feed and nourish the young. The mammæ, from which this milky liquor is produced, are situated on each side the upper part of the breast, immediately under the craw. In the female turtle dove we have met with these glands tumid with milky secretion, and we believe it common to both sexes of the dove genus. The cormorant or pelican genus possess no craw; but, to supply its place, they have a loose skin at the base of the under mandibles, capable of great distension, in which they carry fish to their young. The bustard is said to possess a bag of an astonishing size, for the purpose of retaining water; but the most unaccountable and extraordinary formation in the trachea of many of the males of the duck genus, called a labyrinth, is beyond our reach to discover the use of, as well as the singular flexure in the windpipe of the hooping swan and crane.

* * * * *

_Attention during Incubation._—There is this distinction in the hen: in some, the desire of sitting or incubation is predominant, which they will repeat to the fifth or sixth time in the year, to their emaciation or almost destruction: in others the desire is so slight, that they will probably sit but twice, or even once in the season, and then not steadily. It is for the skilful breeder to take advantage of this variation of quality, the one kind furnishing plenty of eggs for the other to sit upon.

It is proper to place corn and water beside the sitting hen, whenever it may appear necessary, withdrawing them as soon as she is satisfied, not only to encourage steadiness of incubation, but to support the constitutions of those in which the natural excitement is so powerful, that they will remain several successive days upon the nest, at the risk of famishing. I have had instances of hens of this description fainting outright, and appearing as dead, on their finally leaving the nest with the chickens, in a state of total emaciation, having, probably, not eaten or drank more than once in three or four days, during the term of their incubation, twenty-one days. The plan of feeding on the nest should be invariably pursued with all frequent sitters.—_Montagu_—_Moubray._

INCURABLE, _a._ Not admitting remedy, not to be removed by medicine; irremediable, hopeless.

INDIAN RUBBER, or CAOUTCHOUC, _s._ An elastic gum procured from a South American tree, called the Syphonia Uastica. It is mostly brought into Europe in the shape of bottles, which are formed by spreading the gum over moulds of clay.

INDIGO, _s._ A plant, by the Americans called anil, used in dyeing for a blue colour.

INFECT, _v._ To act upon by contagion; to fill with something hurtfully contagious.

INFECTION, _s._ Contagion, mischief by communication.

INFLAME, _v._ To kindle, to set on fire; to heat the body morbidly with obstructed matter; to fire with passion.

INFLAMMATION, _s._ The act of setting on flame; the heat of any morbid part occasioned by obstruction.

Inflammation is a disorder of the blood-vessels, depending upon their having too much blood in them, or upon that blood being impure and acrimonious, or upon the blood vessels themselves being in a diseased state.

Cool air is always of service in inflammatory diseases, and cold air is sometimes still better; even turning the horse out, if the weather is dry, is perhaps the best situation of any. Inflammation may be general or local. General inflammation is fever, of which there is but one kind in the horse, and that may almost always be cured by early and copious bleeding.—_White._

INFLAMMATORY, _a._ Having the power of inflaming.

INFUSION, _s._ The act of pouring in, instillation; the act of steeping any thing in moisture without boiling; the liquor made by infusion.

INJECTION, _s._ The act of casting in; any medicine made to be injected by a syringe, or other instrument, into any part of the body.

INNINGS, _s._ Lands recovered from the sea; term in cricket.

INOCULATION, _s._ The practice of transplanting the small-pox, by infusion of the matter from ripened pustules into the veins of the uninfected.

INSECT, _s._ Insects are so called from a separation in the middle of their bodies, whereby they are cut into two parts, which are joined together by a small ligature, as we see in wasps and common flies.

INSNARE, _v._ To entrap, to catch in a trap, gin, or snare.

INSTINCT, _s._ The power which determines the will of brutes; a desire or aversion in the mind, not determined by reason or deliberation.

They who write on natural history cannot too frequently advert to instinct, that wonderful limited faculty, which, in some instances, raises the brute creation as it were above reason, and in others leaves them so far below it.

It has been remarked that every species of bird has a mode of nidification peculiar to itself; so that a schoolboy would at once pronounce on the sort of nest before him. This is the case among fields and woods and wilds; but, in the villages round London, where mosses and gossamer, and cotton from vegetables, are hardly to be found, the nest of the chaffinch has not that elegant, finished appearance, nor is it so beautifully studded with lichens, as in a more rural district; and the wren is obliged to construct its house with straws and dry grasses, which do not give it that rotundity and compactness so remarkable in the edifices of that little architect. Again, the regular nest of the house martin is hemispheric; but where a rafter, or a joist, or a cornice, may happen to stand in the way, the nest is so contrived as to conform to the obstruction, and becomes flat, or oval, or compressed.

In the following instances instinct is perfectly uniform and consistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse, and the bird called the nuthatch (_Sitta Europæa_) which live much on hazel-nuts; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, as regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that one would wonder how the kernel can be extracted through it: while the last picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill: but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were, in a vice, in some cleft of a tree, or in some crevice; when, standing over it, he perforates the stubborn shell. We have often placed nuts in the chink of a gate-post where nuthatches have been known to haunt, and have always found that those birds have readily penetrated them. While at work they make a rapping noise that may be heard at a considerable distance.

It is no doubt exceedingly difficult, and perhaps impossible, to define where instinct ends, and reason begins, in animals. But that some of them are endowed with a faculty which does not come under the usual notion of instinct, by whatever other name we may choose to call it, will, I think, hardly allow of a dispute. This, as it strikes me, appears in the different degrees of intelligence which we are accustomed to recognize as elevating one species of animal above another,—as the half-reasoning elephant for instance, and the friend of man, the dog, above numberless others. Now, instinct of one tribe, one would think, as much as in another, must be full and perfect, and would not admit of our considering the degree of intelligence manifested in one species as higher or lower than that possessed by another. Again: much more must we conceive that the proper instinct of any species will be fully, and therefore equally, possessed by all individuals of that species. How, then, upon the notion of mere instinct, shall we account for that superiority of intelligence, which is found in one individual, to others of the same species, and which is familiar to those who are employed about, or in any way in the habit of conversing with, animals? But the observation which appears to me most decidedly to carry the faculties of animals to something exceeding the measure and character of instinct, is that of the new and ingenious contrivances to which they will often have recourse in situations, and upon occasions, much too accidental and peculiar to admit of our imagining that they could have been contemplated and provided against in the regular instinct of the whole species. This we should naturally be disposed to conceive must have been given to regulate the ordinary habits of the animals, and adapted to those exigencies of their mode of life which are continually occurring, not to such as do rarely, and might, one would be tempted to say, never occur. A few instances will, perhaps, better explain what I mean, and carry more persuasion than my argument.

I was one day feeding the poor elephant (who was so barbarously put to death at Exeter ’Change) with potatoes, which he took out of my hand. One of them, a round one, fell on the floor, just out of the reach of his proboscis. He leaned against his wooden bar, put out his trunk, and could just touch the potato, but could not pick it up. After several ineffectual efforts, he at last blew the potato against the opposite wall with sufficient force to make it rebound, and he then, without difficulty, secured it. Now it is quite clear, I think, that instinct never taught the elephant to procure his food in this manner; and it must, therefore, have been reason, or some intellectual faculty, which enabled him to be so good a judge of cause and effect. Indeed, the reflecting power of some animals is quite extraordinary. I had a dog who was much attached to me, and who, in consequence of his having been tied up on a Sunday morning, to prevent his accompanying me to church, would conceal himself in good time on that day, and I was sure to find him either at the entrance of the church, or, if he could get in, under the place where I usually sat.

A gentleman, a good shot, lent a favourite old pointer to a friend who had not much to accuse himself of in the slaughter of partridges, however much he might have frightened them. After ineffectually firing at some birds which the old pointer had found for him, the dog turned away in apparent disgust, went home, and never could be persuaded to accompany the same person afterwards.

I have been often much delighted with watching the manner in which some of the old bucks in Bushy Park contrive to get the berries from the fine thorn-trees there. They will raise themselves on their hind legs, give a spring, entangle their horns in the lower branches of the tree, give them one or two shakes, which make some of the berries fall, and they will then quietly pick them up.—_White’s Selborne_—_Jesse._

INSULAR, _a._ Belonging to an island.

INTERMEW, _s._ The change of a hawk’s colour from red to white the second year.

INTESTINA, _s._ An order in the Linnæan system of the class Vermes, including earthworms and leeches.—_Crabbe._

INTESTINES, _s._ The guts, the bowels.

JOCKEY, _s._ A person that rides horses in the race; a man that deals in horses.

JOCKEY, _v._ To jostle by riding against one; to cheat, to trick; to ride; to ride unfairly.

JOINT, _s._ Articulation of limbs, juncture of moveable bones in animal bodies; hinge; a knot in a plant. Out of joint, luxated, slipped from the socket, or corresponding part where it naturally moves.

JOURNEY, _s._ The travel of a day; travel by land.

IPECACUANHA, _s._ An Indian plant.

Ipecacuanha is sometimes employed as an expectorant in chronic cough and asthmatic affections, and I believe with good effect when joined with squills, ammoniacum, &c.—_White._

IRIS, _s._ The rainbow; the circle round the pupil of the eye, which is striped and variegated.