Gentlemen entitled to bear arms. : Almost every person above the lowest rank of mechanics assuming the title of Esquire, it may be worth while to give our readers the opinion of Judge Blackstone on this subject. Esquires and gentlemen are confounded together by Sir Edward Coke, who observes, that every esquire is a gentleman, and a gentleman is defined to be one qui arma gerit, who bears coat-armour, the grant of which adds gentility to a man's family in like manner as civil nobility among the Romans was founded in the jus imaginum, or having the image of one ancestor, at least, who had borne some curule office. It is indeed a matter somewhat unsettled, what constitutes the distinction, or who is a real squire; for it is not an estate, however large, that confers this rank upon its owner. Camden, who was himself a herald, distinguishes them the most accurately, and he reckons up four sorts of them: 1. The eldest sons of Knights, and their eldest sons, in perpetual succession. 2. The eldest sons of younger sons of Peers, and their eldest sons, in The precedency among men being known, that which is due to women, according to their several degrees, will be easily understood: but it is to be observed, that women, before mafriage, have precedency by their father; with this difference between them and the male children, that the same precedency is due to all the daughters that belongs to the eldest, which is not so among the sons; and the reason of this disparity seems to be, that daughters all succeed equally, whereas the eldest son excludes all the rest. By marriage, a womon participates of her husband's dignities; but none of the wife's dignities can come by marriage to her husband, but are to descend to her next heir. If a woman have precedency by creation or birth, she retains the same, though she marry any commoner: but if a woman nobly born marry any Peer, she shall take place according to the degree of her husband only, though she be a Duke's daughter. A woman privileged by marriage with one of noble degree, shall retain the privilege due to her by her husband, though he should be degraded by forfeiture, &c. for crimes are personal. The wife of the eldest son of any degree takes place of the daughters of the same degree, who always have place immediately after the wives of such eldest sons, and both of them take place of the younger sons of the preceding degree. Thus the lady of the eldest son of an Earl takes place of an Earl's daughter, and both of them precede the wife of the younger son of a Marquis; also the wife of any degree precedes the wife of the eldest son of the preceding degree. Thus, the wife of a Marquis precedes the wife of the eldest son of a Duke. Wives of the eldest 2 of Knights of the sons; daughters, S Garter. Wives of the eldest of Knights of the sons; daughters, S Bath. Wives of the eldest of Knights Bachesons; daughters, S lors. Wives of the youngest sons of Baronets: Wives of Burgesses, &c. The wives of Privy Counsellors, Judges, &c. are to take the same place as their husbands do. See the former list. PRECENTOR, a dignitary in cathedrals, popularly called the chantor, or master of the choir. PRECESSION of the equinoxes, is a very slow motion of them, by which they change their place, going from east to west, or backward, in antecedentia, as astronomers call it, or contrary to the order of the signs. From the late improvements in astrono my it appears, that the pole, the solstices, the equinoxes, and all the other points of the ecliptic, have a retrograde motion, and are constantly moving from east to west, or from Aries towards Pisces, &c. by means of which the equinoctial points are carried further and further back among the preceding signs of stars, at the rate of about 504" each year; which retrograde motion is called the precession, recession, or retrocession of the equinoxes. Hence, as the stars remain immoveable, and the equinoxes go backward, the stars will seem to move more and more eastward with respect to them; for which reason the longitudes of all the stars, being reckoned from the first point of Aries, or the vernal equinox, are continually increasing. From this cause it is, that the constellations seem all to have changed the places assigned to them by the ancient astronomers. In the time of Hipparchus, and the oldest astronomers, the equinoctial points were fixed to the first stars of Aries and Libra: but the signs do not now answer to the same points; and the stars which were then in conjunction with the sun, when he was in the equinox, are now a whole sign, or 30 degrees, to the eastward of it; so, the first star of Aries is now in the portion of the ecliptic called Taurus; and the stars of Taurus are now in Gemini; and those of Gemini in Cancer, and so on. This seeming change of place in the stars was first observed by Hipparchus of Rhodes, who, 128 years before Christ, found that the longitudes of the stars in his time were greater than they had been before observed by Tymochares, and than they were in the sphere of Eudoxus, who wrote 380 years before Christ. Ptolemy also perceived the gradual change in the longitudes of the stars; but he stated the quantity at too little, making it but 1° in 100 years, which is at the rate of only 36" per year. Y-hang, a Chinese, in the year 721, stated the quantity of this change at 1° in 83 years, which is at the rate of 43" per year. Other more modern astronomers have made this precession still more, but with some small differences from each other; and it is now usually taken at 501" per year. All these rates are deduced from a comparison of the longitude of certain stars, as observed by more ancient astronomers, with the later observations of the same stars; viz. by subtracting the former from the latter, and dividing the remainder by the number of years in the interval between the dates of the observations. Thus, by a medium of a great number of comparisons, the quantity of the annual change has been fixed at 501′′, according to which rate it will require 25,791 years for the equinoxes to make their revolutions westward quite around the circle, and return to the same point again. The phenomena of this retrograde motion of the equinoxes, or intersections of the equinoctial with the ecliptic, and consequently of the conical motion of the earth's axis, by which the pole of the equator describes a small circle in the same period of time, may be understood and illustrated as follows: let NZSVL be the earth. (See Plate Perspective, &c. fig. 6) SONA its axis produced to the starry heavens, and terminating in A. the present north pole of the heavens, which is vertical to N, the north pole of the earth. Let EOQ be the equator, TZ the tropic of cancer, and VTV the tropic of capricorn; VOZ the ecliptic, and BO its axis, both of which are immoveable among the stars. But as the equinoctial points recede in the ecliptic, the earth's axis SON is in motion upon the earth's centre O, in such a manner as to describe the double cone NOn and SOs, round the axis of the ecliptic BO, in the time that the equinoctial points move round the ecliptic, which is 25,791 years, and in that length of time, the north pole of the earth's axis produced, describes From this shifting of the equinoctial points, and with them all the signs of the ecliptic, it follows that those stars, which in the infancy of Astronomy were in Aries, are now found in Taurus; those of Taurus, in Gemini, &c. Hence, likewise it is, that the stars which rose or set at any particular season of the year, in the times of Hesiod, Eudoxus, Virgil, Pliny, &c. by no means answer at this time their de scriptions. As to the physical cause of the preces sion of the equinoxes, Sir Isaac Newton demonstrates, that it arises from the broad or flat spheroidal figure of the earth, which itself arises from the earth's rotation about its axis: for as more mat ter has thus been accumulated all round the equatorial parts than any where else on the earth, the sun and moon, when on either side of the equator, by attracting this redundant matter, bring the equator sooner under them, in every return towards it, than if there was no such accumulation. Sir Issac Newton, in determining the quantity of the annual precession from the theory of gravity, on supposition that the equatorial diameter of the earth is to the polar diameter, as 230 to 229, finds the sun's action sufficient to produce a precession of 9" only; and collecting from the tides the proportion between the sun's force and the moon's, to be as 1 to 44, he settles the mean precession resulting from their joint actions at 50"; which is nearly the same as it has since been found by the best observations. PRECIÆ, in botany, the name of the twenty-first orderin Linnæus's Fragments of a Natural Method; containing the primrose, and a few other plants which agree with it in habit and structure. PRECIPITATE, in chemistry, is any matter or substance, which, having been dissolved in a fluid, falls to the bottom of the vessel on the addition of some other substance, capable of producing a decom. position of the compound. The term is generally applied when the separation takes place in a floculent or pulverulent form, in opposition to crystallization, which implies a like separation in an angular form. But chemists call a mass of crystals a precipitate, when they subside so suddenly, that their proper crys talline shape cannot be distinguished by the naked eye, as in the instance of Glauber's salt, when separated from its watery solution by mixing with it a portion of alcohol. PRECIPITATION, that process by which bodies dissolved, mixed, or suspended in a fluid, are separated from the fluid, and made to gravitate to the bottom of the vessel: this is one of the great operations in chemistry, and is opposed to that of solution. In truth, the chief operations in the laboratory may be resolved into solution and precipitation. When a base is employed to precipitate a soluble acid, the substance thrown down is always a compound, consisting of the acid united to the base employed. In this case the acid is sometimes completely separated, and sometimes not, according to the energy of the base employed, and the degree of insolubility of the salt formed. The same explanation applies as in VOL. X. the first case. When a neutral salt is employed as a precipitant, the substance which falls is always a compound. It is composed of one of the ingredients of the precipitating salt united to one ingredient of salt in solution. Such salts alone can be employed as are known to form insoluble compounds with the acid or base which we wish to throw down. In these cases the separation is complete, when the new salt formed is completely insoluble. Neutral salts perform the office of precipitants in general much more readily and completely than pure bases or acids. Thus the alkaline carbonates throw down the earths much more effectually than the pure alkalies, and sulphate of soda separates barytes much more rapidly than pure sulphuric acid. This superiority is owing partly to the combined action of the acid and base, and partly to the comparatively weak action of a neutral salt upon the precipitate, when compared to that of an acid or alkali. For the precipitation takes place, not because the salts are insoluble in water, but because they are insoluble in the particular solution in which the precipitate appears. Now if this solution happens to be capable of dissolving any particular salt, that salt will not precipitate, even though it be insoluble in water. Hence the reason why precipitates so often disappear, when there is present in the solution an excess of acid, of alkali, &c. PRECONTRACT of marriage, in the civil law, avoided the marriage; but by the statute 2 George I. c. 23, called the marriage act, it is declared, that it shall not be allowed, nor shall any contract of marriage be enforced in the ecclesiastical courts. The only remedy upon breach of a promise of marriage is by action for damages at common law. PREDIAL tithes, those which are paid of things arising and growing from the ground only, as corn, hay, fruit of trees, and the like. PREENING, in natural history, the action of birds dressing their feathers, to enable them to glide the more readily through the air, &c. For this purpose they have two peculiar glands on their rump, which secrete an unctuous matter into a bag that is perforated, out of which the bird occasionally draws it with its bill. PREGNANCY. See MIDWIFERY. PREHNITE, in mineralogy, a species of the flint genus. Its colours are green in almost all its shades. It is sometimes massive, sometimes crystallized. Exter Τ It occurs in Dauphiny, and in many parts of Scotland. PRELIMINARY, in general, denotes something to be examined and determined, before an affair can be treated of to the purpose. The preliminaries of peace consist chiefly in settling the powers of ambassadors, and certain points in dispute, which must be determined previously to the treaty itself. PRELUDE, præludinum, in music, is usually a flourish or irregular air, which a musician plays off-hand, to try if his instrument be in tune, and so lead him into the piece to be played. Very often the whole band in the orchestra run a few divisions, to give the tune. PREMISES, in logic, an appellation given to the two first propositions of a syllogism, as going before or preceding the conclusion. Premises are the foundation or principles of our reasoning; which being either self-evident or demonstrative propositions, the truth of the conclusion is equally evident. PREMISES, in law, from the Latin, premissa (the foregoing), is applied to that part in the beginning of a deed which expresses the names of the grantor and grantee, and the land or thing granted; but it is chiefly used to signify the thing granted only. PREMIUM, or PREMIUM, properly signifies a reward or recompense; but it is chiefly used in a mercantile sense for the sum of money given to an insurer, whether of ships, houses, lives, &c. See INSURANCE. The term premium is also applied to what is given for a thing above par, or prime cost; thus if lottery tickets sell for 20s. more than prime cost, or the price at which the government issued them, this 20s. is called a premium. PREMNA, in botany, a genus of the Didynamia Angiospermia class and order. Natural order of personatæ. Vitices, Jussieu. Essential character: calyx twolobed; corolla four-cleft; berry fourcelled; seeds solitary. There are two species; viz. P. integrefolia, and P. serratifolia; both natives of the East Indies. PRENANTHES, in botany, a genus of the Syngenesia Polygamia Equalis class and order. Natural order of Composite Semiflosculosa. Cichoraceæ, Jussieu. Essential character: calyx calycled; florets in a single row: pappus simple, subsessile; receptacle naked. There are nineteen species. PREPOSITION, in grammar, one of the parts of speech, being an indeclinable particle, which yet serves to govern the nouns that follow it. See GRAMMAR. PREPUCE. See ANATOMY. PREROGATIVE, in law, means all the rights and privileges which by law the King hath, as chief of the commonwealth, and as intrusted with the execution of the laws; and this can be only according to Magna Charta. We shall here briefly set down those articles which are enumerated by Lord Chief Baron Comyns, in his "Digest," as belonging to the King's prerogative, premising only, that many things are laid down in our law. books from ancient authorities, which do not thoroughly accord with the spirit of the constitution, as improved at the revolution; and that every thing, which is contrary to that glorious spirit, may be well questioned to be law at the present day. Those who were formerly called prerogative lawyers were little better than the willing slaves of absolute monarchy. As to his domestic concerns, the care of the marriages in the royal family belongs to the King, and is now regulated by statute 12 George III. c. 11. As to foreign nations, he has the sovereignty of the seas surrounding England, and may make treaties and alliances, and send ambassadors and envoys to foreign states; and a league is said to be broken by a prohibition of all the commodities of a kingdom in amity. He may, in virtue of the same right, grant reprisals, by taking the goods of foreign subjects, here |