al, fibrous, and tufted; culms simple, a foot in height, upright, round, smooth, without knots,clothed entirely with the sheaths of the leaves; leaves rolled in, and bristle shaped, mucronate, glaucous; sheaths long and widened; stipule lanceolate, growing to the leaf; panicle simple, few-flowered; flowers large, from four to six; floret awlshaped, round, nerveless, shorter than the calyx, silky, bristly at the base; the feathered awns are a beautiful and remarkable feature, at once distinguishing this from all other grasses.

STIPULA, in botany, straw, one of the fulcra or supports of plants, defined by Linnæus to be a small leaf, stationed on each side the base of the foot-stalks of the flower and leaves, at their first ap. pearance, for the purpose of support. Linnæus considers the stipulæ as essential characters, in discriminating the species; they exhibit the same variety in form and structure as the leaves, at whose insertion they are frequently placed. The greater number of plants have two stipulæ, one on each side of the foot-stalk. Some stipulæ fall before the leaves, as in the cherry; others are permanent, or continue till the fall of the leaves, as in the rose, raspberry, &c. In most plants, the stipulæ are detached from the stalk; but in the rose, raspberry, &c. they grow close to the plant. By means of the stipulæ, we have frequently capital means of distinguishing the species: as an ex ample, the African and Ethiopian species of honey-flower are essentially distinguished from one another, by the number and situation of the stipula, which, in the former, are single, and grow to the stalk; in the latter double, and detached from it.

STOCKING, that part of the clothing of the leg and foot which immmediately covers their nudity, and screens them from the cold, &c. Anciently, the only stockings in use were made of cloth, or of milled stuff's sewed together; but since the invention of knitting and weaving stockings of silk, wool, cotton, thread, &c. the use of cloth stockings is quite laid aside. The modern stockings, whether woven or knit, are a kind of plex uses, formed of an infinite number of little knots, called stitches, loops, or meshes, intermingled in one another. Knit stockings are wrought with needles made of polished iron or brass wire, which interweave the threads, and form the meshes the stocking consists of. This operation is called knitting, the invention whereof is commonly attributed to the

Scots, on this ground, that the first works of this kind came from thence. It is added, that it was on this account that the company of stocking knitters, established at Paris in 1527, took for their patron St. Fiacre, who is said to have been the son of a king of Scotland. Woven stockings are ordinarily very fine: they are manufactured on a frame, or machine of polished iron.

The English and French have greatly contested the honour of the invention of the stocking-loom; but we are assured whatever pretensions the French claim to this invention, that the same was certainly devised by William Lee, of St. John's College, Cambridge, in the year 1589; though it is true, that he first made it public in France, after despairing of success in his own country.

By the word stock was originally meant, a STOCKS, or Public Funds in England. particular sum of money, contributed to the establishing of a fund to enable a company to carry on a certain trade, by means of which the person became a partner in that trade, and received a share of the profit made thereby, in proportion to the money employed. But this term has been extended further, though improperly, to signify any sum of money which has been lent to the government, on condition of receiving a certain interest till the money is repaid, and which makes a part of the national debt. As the security both of the government and of the public companies is esteemed preferable to that of any pri vate person, as the stocks are negotiable; and may be sold at any time, and as the interest is always punctually paid when due; so they are thereby enabled to borrow money on a lower interest than what could be obtained from lending it to private persons, where there must be always some danger of losing both principal and interest. But as every capital stock or fund of a company is raised for a particular purpose, and limited by parliament to a certain sum, it necessarily follows, that when that fund is completed, no stock can be bought of the company; though shares already purchased may be transferred from one person to another. This being the case, there is frequently a great disproportion between the original value of the shares and what is given for them when transferred; for if there are more buyers than sellers, a person, who is indifferent about selling, will not part with his share without a considerable profit to himself: and on the contrary, if many are disposed to sell, and

case it goes across the stomach; and by deacons, over the left shoulder, scarfwise; when the priest reads the gospel for any one, he lays the bottom of his stole on his head. The stole is a broad swathe, or slip of stuff, hanging from the neck to the feet, with three crosses thereon. The bishops anciently pretended, that the parish-priests were never to appear before them but in their stole. In Flanders and Italy they always preach in stoles; it is supposed to be a representation of the extremities of the long robe wore by the high-priest of the Jews.

STOLE, groom of the, the eldest gentleman of his Majesty's bed-chamber, whose office and honour it is to present, and put on, his Majesty's first garment, or shirt, every morning, and to order the things in the chamber.

STOLEN goods. To help people to stolen goods for reward, without apprehending the felon, is felony. 4 George I. c. 11. Persons having, or receiving, lead, iron, copper, brass, bell metal, or soider, knowing them to be stolen, shall be transported. 29 George II. c. 30.

STOMACH. See ANATOMY. STOMOXYS, in natural history, a genus of insects of the order Diptera. Sucker with a single valved sheath, inclosing bristles, each in its proper sheath; two feelers, short, setaceous, of five articulations; antennæ setaceous. There are sixteen species, in two sections: A. sheath convolute, and geniculate at the base, with two bristles. B. sheath covering the mouth with five bristles.

STONE (EDMUND), in biography, a distinguished self-taught mathematician, was born in Scotland; but neither the place nor time of his birth is well known; nor have we any memoirs of his life, except a letter from the Chevalier de Ramsay, author of the "Travels of Cyrus," in a letter to Father Castel, a Jesuit at Paris, and published in the "Memoirs de Trevoux," p. 109, as follows: "True genius overcomes all the disadvantages of birth, fortune, and education of which Mr. Stone is a rare example. Born the son of a gardener of the Duke of Argyle, he arrived at eight years of age before he learned to read. By chance, a servant having taught young Stone the Jetters of the alphabet, there needed nothing more to discover and expand his genius. He applied himself to study, and he arrived at the knowledge of the most sublime geometry and analysis, without a master, without a conductor, without any other guide but pure genius.

At eighteen years of age he had made these considerable advances without being known, and without knowing himself the prodigies of his acquisitions. The Duke of Argyle, who joined to his military talents a general knowledge of every science that adorns the mind of a man of his rank, walking one day in his garden, saw lying on the grass a Latin copy of Sir Isaac Newton's celebrated "Principia." He called some one to him, to take and carry it back to his library. Our young gardener told him that the book belonged to him. To you! replied the Duke. Do you understand geometry, Latin, Newton ?' 'I know a little of them,' replied the young man, with an air of simplicity, arising from a profound ignorance of his own knowledge and talents. The Duke was surprised; and having a taste for the sciences, he entered into conversation with the young mathematician: he asked him several questions, and was astonished at the force, the accuracy, and the candour of his answers. 'But how,' said the Duke, 'came you by the knowledge of all these things? Stone replied, “A servant taught me, ten years since, to read: does one need to know any thing more than the twenty-four letters, in order to learn every thing else that one wishes? The Duke's curiosity redoubled; he sat down upon a bank and re. quested a detail of all his proceedings, in becoming so learned. I first learned to read,' says Stone: the masons were then at work upon your house: I went near them one day, and I saw that the architect used a rule, compasses, and that he made calculations. I inquired what might be the meaning and use of these things; and I was informed that there was a science called arithmetic: I purchased a book of arithmetic, and I learned it. I was told there was another science called

geometry: I bought the books, and I learned geometry. By reading, I found that there were good books in these two sciences in Latin: I bought a dictionary, and I learned Latin. I understood also that there were good books of the same kind in French: I bought a dictionary, and I learned French. And this, my Lord, is what I have done it seems to me that we may learn every thing, when we know the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.' This account charmed the Duke. He drew this wonderful genius out of his obscurity; and he provided him with an employment which left him plenty of time to apply himself to the

sciences. He discovered in him also the same genius for music, for painting, for architecture, for all the sciences which depend on calculations and proportions

"I have seen Mr. Stone. He is a man of great simplicity. He is at present sensible of his own knowledge; but he is not puffed up with it. He is possessed with a pure and disinterested love for the mathematics, though he is not solicitous to pass for a mathematician; vanity having no part in the great labour he sustains to excel in that science. He despises fortune also; and he has solicited me twenty times to request the Duke to give him less employment, which may not be worth the half of that he now has, in order to be more retired, and less taken off from his favourite studies. He discovers sometimes, by methods of his own, truths which others have discovered before him. He is charmed to find on these occasions that he is not a first inventor, and that others have made a greater progress than he thought. Far from being a plagiary, he attributes ingenious solutions, which he gives to certain problems, to the hints which he has found in others, although the connection is but very distant," &c.

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Mr. Stone was author and translator of several useful works; viz. 1. "A new Mathematical Dictionary," in 1 vol. 8vo. first printed in 1726. 2. "Fluxions," in 1 vol. 8vo. 1730. The Direct Method is a translation from the French of Hospi. tal's Analyse des Infiniments Petits;" and the Inverse Method was supplied by Stone himself. 3. "The Elements of Euclid," in 2 vols. 8vo. 1731. A neat and useful edition of these Elements, with an account of the life and writings of Euclid, and a defence of his Elements against modern objectors: beside other smaller works. Stone was a fellow of the Royal Society, and had inserted in the "Philosophical Transactions" (vol. xli. p. 218.) an "Account of two species of Lines of the third Order, not mentioned by Sir Isaac Newton or Mr. Stirling.'

وو

STONE, denotes a certain quantity or weight of some commodities. A stone of beef, at London, is the quantity of eight pounds; in Herefordshire, twelve pounds; in the north, sixteen pounds. A stone of wool (according to the statute of 11 Henry VII) is to weigh fourteen pounds; yet in some places it is more, in others less; as in Gloucestershire, fifteen pounds; in Herefordshire, twelve pounds. A stone, among horse-coursers, is the weight of fourteen pounds.

VOL. XI.

STONEHENGE, a celebrated monument of antiquity, stands in the middle of a flat area, near the summit of a hill six miles distant from Salisbury. It is inclosed by a circular double bank and ditch, near thirty feet broad, after crossing which we ascend 30 yards before we reach the work. The whole fabric consisted of two circles and two ovals. The outer circle is about 180 feet diameter; consisting, when entire, of 60 stones, 30 uprights and 30 imposts, of which remain only 24 uprights, 17 standing, and 7 down, 3 feet asunder, and 8 imposts. Eleven uprights have their 5 imposts on them by the grand entrance. These stones are from 13 to 20 feet high. The lesser circle is somewhat more than 8 feet from the inside of the outer one, and consisted of 40 lesser stones, (the highest 6 feet,) of which only 19 remain, and only 11 standing: the walk between these two circles is 300 feet in circumference. The adytum, or cell, is an oval formed of 10 stones (from 16 to 22 feet high) in pairs, with imposts, which Dr. Stukely calls trilithons, and above 30 feet high, rising in height as as they go round, and each pair separate, and not connected as the outer pair; the highest 8 feet. Within these are 19 more smaller single stones, of which only six are standing. At the upper end of the adytum is the altar, a large slab of blue coarse marble, 20 inches thick, 16 feet long, and 4 broad; pressed down by the weight of the vast stones that have fallen upon it. The whole number of stones, uprights, imposts, and altar, is exactly 140. The stones are far from being artificial, but were most probably brought from those called the Grey Weathers, on Marlborough Downs, 15 or 16 miles off; and if tried with a tool, they appear of the same hardness, grain, and colour, generally reddish. The heads of oxen, deer, and other beasts, have been found on digging in and about Stonehenge; and human bones in the circumjacent barrows. There are three entrances from the plain to this structure, the most considerable of which is from the north-east, and at each of them were raised, on the outside of the trench, two huge stones, with two smaller within, parallel to them.

It has been long a dispute among the learned, by what nation, and for what purpose, these enormous stones were collected and arranged. The first account of this structure we meet with is in Geoffrey of Monmouth, who, in the reign of King Stephen, wrote the history

L 1

of the Britons in Latin. He tells us, that it was erected by the counsel of Merlin, the British enchanter, at the command of Aurelius Ambrosius, the last British King, in memory of 460 Britons, who were murdered by Hengist the Saxon. The next account is that of Polydore Virgil, who says that the Britons erected this as a sepulchral monument of Aurelius Ambrosius. Others suppose it to have been a sepulchral monument of Boadicea, the famous British Queen. Inigo Jones is of opinion that it was a Roman temple, from a s'one 16 feet long, and 4 broad, placed in an exact position to the eastward, altar fashion. Mr. Charlton attributed it to the Danes, who were two years masters of Wiltshire; a tin tablet, on which were some unknown characters, supposed to be Punic, was dug up near it in the reign of Henry VIII. but is lost : probably that might have given some information respecting its founders. Its common name, Stonehenge, is Saxon, and signifies a "stone gallows," to which those stones having transverse imposts bear some resemblance. It is also called in Welsh choir gour, or "the giant's dance." Mr Grose thinks that Dr. Stukely has completely proved this structure to have been a British temple, in which the Druids officiated. He supposes it to have been the metropolitan temple of Great Britain, and translates the words choir gour, "the great choir, or temple." STONE ware, aspecies of pottery, so called from its hardness. See DELFT ware, PORCELAIN, and POTTERY. Clay is a principal ingredient in pottery of all kinds, which has the property of hardening in the fire, and of receiving and preserving any form into which it is moulded. One kind of clay resists the most violent action of the fire, after being hardened to a certain degree; but is incapable of receiving a sufficient degree of hardness and solidity. A second kind assumes a hardness resembling that of flint, and such a compactness, that vessels made of it have a glossy appearance in their fracture, resembling porcelain. These two species owe their peculiar properties, of resisting heat without melting, to sand, chalk, gypsum, or ferruginous earth, which they contain. A third species of clay begins to harden with a moderate fire, and melts entirely with a strong fire. It is of the second species that stone ware is made. The most famous manufactory of stone ware, as well as of other kinds of pottery, is at Burslem, in Staffordshire. This can be traced, with certainty, at least two

centuries back; but of its first introduction no tradition remains. In 1686, as we learn from Dr. Plot's "Natural History of Staffordshire," published in that year, only the coarse yellow, red, black, and mottled wares were made in this country; and the only materials employed for them appear to have been the different coloured clays which are found in the neighbourhood, and which form some of the measures or strata of the coal mines. These coarse clays made the body of the ware, and the glaze was produced by powdered lead ore, sprinkled on the pieces before firing, with the addition of a little manganese for some particular colours. The quantity of goods manufac tured was at that time so inconsiderable, that the chief sale of them, the Doctor says, was" to poor crate-men, who carried them on their backs all over the country." About the year 1690, two ingenious artizans from Germany, of the name of Eller, settled near Burslem, and carried on a small work for a little time. They brought into this country the method of glazing stone ware, by casting salt into the kiln while it is hot, and some other improvements of less importance; but finding they could not keep their secrets to themselves, they left the place rather in disgust. From this time, various kinds of stone ware, glazed by the fumes of salt, in the manner above mentioned, were added to the wares before made. The white kind, which afterwards became, and for many succeeding years continued the staple branch of pottery, is said to have owed its origin to the following accident. A potter, Mr. Astbury, travelling to London, perceived something amiss with one of his horses' eyes; an hostler at Dunstable said he could soon cure him, and for that purpose put a common black flint stone into the fire. The potter observing it, when taken out, to be of a fine white, immediately conceived the idea of improving his ware by the addition of this material to the whitest clay he could procure: accordingly he sent home a quantity of the flint stones of that country, where they are plentiful among the chalk, and by mixing them with tobac co pipe clay, produced a white stone ware, much superior to any that had been seen before. Some of the other potters soon discovered the source of this superiority, and did not fail to follow his example. For a long time they pounded the flint stones in private rooms, by manual labour, in mortars; but many of the poor workmen suffered severely from the dust