gulf of Melas, and on the east by the Hellespont; being joined on the north to the continent by a neck of land about thirty-seven furlongs broad. The inland parts of Thrace are very cold and barren, the snow lying on the mountains the greatest part of the year; but the maritime provinces are productive of all sorts of grain and necessaries of life; and withal so pleasant that Mela compares them to the most fruitful and agreeable countries of Asia. The ancient Thracians were deemed a brave and warlike nation, but of a cruel and savage temper; being, according to the Greek writers, strangers to all humanity and good nature. It was to the Thracians, how ever, that the Greeks were chiefly indebted for the polite arts that flourished among them; for Orpheus, Linus, Musaus, Thamyris, and Eumolpus, all Thracians, were the first, as Eustathius informs us, who charmed the inhabitants of Greece with their eloquence and melody, and persuaded them to exchange their fierceness for a sociable life and peaceful manners; nay, a great part of Greece was anciently peopled by the Thracians. Tereus, a Thracian, governed at Daulis in Phocis. See PHILOMELA. From thence a body of Thracians passed over to Eubæa, and possessed themselves of that island. Of the same nation were the Aones, Tembices, and the Hyanthians, who made themselves masters of Boeotia; and great part of Attica itself was inhabited by Thracians, under the command of the celebrated Eumolpus. Thrace was anciently divided into a number of petty states, which were first subdued by Philip II. of Macedon. On the decline of the Macedonian empire, the country fell under the power of the Romans. It continued under subjection to them till the irruption of the Turks, in whose hands it still remains. THRALL, n. s. & v. a. Sax. Snæl. A slave; THRAL'DOM, n. s. Sone who is in the power of another: to enslave: not in use: thraldom is, slavery; servitude. This country, in a great part desolate, groaneth under the Turkish thraldom. Sandys. How far am I inferior to thee in the state of the mind and yet know I that all the heavens cannot bring me to such thraldom. Sidney. No thralls like them that inward bondage have. Id. But sith she will the conquest challenge need, Let her accept me as her faithful thrall. Spenser. Let me be a slave t'atchieve the maid, Whose sudden sight hath thralled my wounded eye. Shakspeare. The author of nature is not thralled to the laws of nature. Drummond. That we may so suffice his vengeful ire, Or do him mightier service, as his thralls By right of war, whate'er his business be. Milton. And laid about him, till his nose From thrall of ring and cord broke loose. Hudibras. He shall rule, and she in thraldom live. Dryden. They tell us we are all born slaves; life and thraldom we entered into together, and can never be quit of the one till we part with the other. Locke. THRAPSTON, a town of England, in the county of Northampton, with a market on Tuesday, seated on the river Nen, which is navigable hence up to Northampton, and down to the sea by Wisbeach. There is a bridge here over the river. Two miles distant is Drayton, the seat of his grace the duke of Dorset; and four miles hence lies Lilford Hall, the seat of lord Lilford. Eight miles north of Higham-Ferrers, and seventy-five N. N. W. of London. Distance to Peterborough twenty-one miles, to Stamford twenty-two, to Huntingdon seventeen, to Northampton twenty-two. Long. 0° 15′ W., lat. 52° 26'. N. Sax. danrcan; Teut. dreschen; Belg. dersSchen. To beat corn THRASH, v. a. & v. n. THRASH'ER, N. s. THRASH'INGFLOOR. from the chaff; to beat; drub: as a verb neuter, to labor; drudge: a thrasher is, he who thrashes: thrashingfloor, the place where this operation is performed. Written variously thrash or thresh, but thrash is more agreeable to etymology. Gideon threshed wheat to hide it. Judges viii. 11. Here be oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing instruments for wood. 2 Samuel xxiv. 22. First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw. Shakspeare. Our soldiers, like a lazy thrasher with a flail, Fell gently down, as if they struck their friends. Id. Thou scurvy valiant ass! thou art here but to thrash Trojans, and thou art bought and sold among those of any wit like a Barbarian slave. Id. Troilus and Cressida. In the sun your golden grain display, And thrash it out, and winnow it by day. Dryden. I rather would be Mevius, thresh for rhimes Like his, the scorn and scandal of the times, Than that Philippick fatally divine, Which is inscribed the second, should be mine. Id. In vain the hinds the threshing-fluor prepare, And exercise their flails in empty air. Id. The careful ploughman doubting stands, Lest on the threshing-floor his sheaves prove chaff. Milton. Gideon was taken from threshing, as well as Cincinnatus from the plough, to command armies. Locke on Education. Not barely the plowman's pains, the reaper's and thresher's toil, and the baker's sweat, is to be counted into the bread we eat the labour of those employed about the utensils must all be charged. Locke. This is to preserve the ends of the bones from an incalescency, which they being hard bodies would contract from a swift motion; such as that of running or threshing. Ray. Out of your clover well dried in the sun, after the first threshing, get what seed you can. Mortimer. Here too the thresher, brandishing his flail, Bespeaks a master. Dodsley. THRASHING is the act of beating out corn or other produce from the straw. The flail was the only implement formerly used; but it is now be come much too tedious and expensive, as well as liable to many other objections, and always, besides leaving many in the ear, bruises a great many seeds. It has been attempted to avoid these inconveniences by proper machines provided with a number of flails, or other parts answering the same purpose, made to move by the power of water, wind, steam, or horses. A flail which was used by the Romans, called baculus, fustis, or pertica, was probably nothing more than a cudgel or pole. The thrashing machine, which was called tribula, or tribulum, and sometimes traba, was a kind of sledge made of boards joined together, and loaded with stone or iron. Horses were yoked to this machine, and a man was seated upon it to drive them over the sheaves of corn. In the greatest part of France the flail is used for thrashing; but in the southern districts it is generally performed, as in the east, by the feet of animals animals are also used for the same purpose in Spain, Italy, the Morea, and the Canaries. In hot climates the grains do not adhere so firmly to the stalk as in cold countries, and therefore animals are so frequently employed. The operation is performed in this manner:-The sheaves, after being opened, are spread in such a manner that the ears of the corn are laid as much uppermost as possible, and a man, standing in the centre, holds the halters of the cattle, which are made to trot round as in a manege; whilst other men with forks shake the straw up from time to time, and the cattle are trotted over it again and again till they have beaten out all the grain. The first machine attempted in modern times was invented at Edinburgh, about 1732, by Michael Menzies. It consisted of a number of instruments like flails, fixed in a moveable beam, and inclined to it at an angle of 10°. On each side of the beam in which the flails were fixed, floors or benches were placed for spreading the sheaves on. The flails were moved backwards and forwards upon the benches by means of a crank fixed on the end of an axle, which made about thirty revolutions in a minute. The second thrashing machine was invented by Mr. Michael Stirling, a farmer in the parish of Dunblane, Perthshire. In 1753, under the pretence of amusing his children, he formed in miniature a water mill, in which two iron springs, made to rise and fall alternately, represented the motion of two flails, by which a few stalks of corn put under them might be speedily thrashed. This plan he executed on a scale sufficiently large within two years after, making the springs about ten feet long, each of which had one end firmly screwed into a solid plank, and the other terminated in a round batoon of solid iron, two feet long and above an inch in diameter. Under these the sheaves were conveyed gradually forward in a narrow channel or trough, by passing between two indented horizontal cylinders, similar to those now used in most of the thrashing mills in that part of the country, and called feeders. In this manner the thrashing was executed completely, and with considerable rapidity; but as the operation was performed on a low floor, and no method contrived for carrying off the straw, the accumulation of it produced such confusion, and the removal of it was attended with such danger, that this scheme was very soon entirely abandoned. Mr. Stirling, therefore, laying aside the iron springs with the feeders, and all the apparatus adapted to them, he retained only an outer or water wheel, with an inner or cog wheel moving on the same axle; to this inner wheel, which had forty-eight teeth or cogs, he applied a vertical trundle or pinion, with notches, the axle of which passed through a floor above the wheel, and having its upper pivot secured in a beam six feet above that floor: at the distance of three feet three inches above the floor, two straight pieces of squared wood, each four feet long, passed through the axle of the trundle at right angles, forming four arms, to be moved round horizontally. To these extremities of the arms were fixed four iron plates, each twenty inches long, and eight broad at the end next the arms, but tapering towards a point at the other end. This large horizontal fly, constituting four thrashes, was enclosed within a wooden cylindrical box three feet and a half high and eight feet in diameter. On the top of the box was an opening or port (two or three ports were made at first, but one was found sufficient) eight inches wide, and extending from the circumference a foot and a half towards its centre, through which the corn sheaves descended, being first opened and laid one by one on a board with two ledges gently declining towards the port; on which board they were moderately pressed down with a boy's hand, to prevent them from being too hastily drawn in by the repeated strokes of the thrashers. Within the box was an inclined plane, along which the straw and grain fell down into a wide wire riddle two feet square, placed immediately under a hole of nearly the same size. The riddle received a jerk at every revolution of the spindle from a knob placed on the side of it, and was instantly thrust backward by a small spring pressing it in the opposite direction. The short straw, with the grain and chaff which passed through the wide riddle, fell immediately into an oblong straight riddle, which hung with one end raised and the other depressed, and was moved by a contrivance equally simple with the other; and, having no ledge at the lower end, the long chaff which could not pass through the riddle dropped thence to the ground; while the grain and most of the chaff falling through the riddle into a pair of common barn-fanners that stood under it on the ground floor, the strong grain, the weak, and the chaff, were all separated with great exactness. The fanners were moved by a rope or band running circuitously in a shallow niche cut on the circumference of the cog-wheel. The straw collected gradually in the bottom of the box over the wide riddle, and through an opening two feet and a half wide, and as much in the height, left in that side of the box nearest the brink of the upper floor, was drawn down to the ground with a rake by the person or persons employed to form it into sheaves or rolls. A third thrashing-mill was invented in 1772 by two persons nearly about the same time, and upon the same principles. Mr. Alderton who lived near Alnwick, and Mr. Smart, at Wark in Northumberland. The operation was performed by rubbing. The sheaves were carried round between an indented drum of about six feet diameter, and a number of indented rollers arranged round the circumference of the drum, and attached to it by means of springs; so that, while the drum revolved, the fluted rollers rubbed the corn off from the straw by rubbing against the flutings of the drum. But, as a considerable quantity of the grain was bruised in passing between the rollers, the machine was soon laid aside. In 1776 an attempt was made by Mr. Andrew Meikle, an ingenious millwright in the parish of Tyningham, East Lothian, to construct a new machine upon the principles which had been adopted by Mr. Menzies. This consisted in making joints in the flails, which Mr. Menzies had formed without any. But this machine, after much labor and expense, was soon laid aside, on account of the difficulty of keeping it in repair, and the small quantity of work performed, which did not exceed one boll or six Winchester bushels of barley per hour. Some time after this Mr. Francis Kinloch, junior, of Gilmerton, having visited the machine invented in Northumberland, attempted an improvement upon it. He enclosed the drum in a fluted cover; and, instead of making the drum itself fluted, he fixed upon the outside of it four fluted pieces of wood, which, by means of springs, could be raised a little above the circumference of the drum, so as to press against the fluted covering, and thus rub off the ears of corn as the sheaves passed round between the drum and the fluted covering But not finding this machine to answer his expectations (for it bruised the grain in the same manner as the Northumberland machine did), he sent it to Mr. Meikle, that he might, if possible, rectify its errors. Mr. Meikle, who had long directed his thoughts to this subject, applied himself with much ardor and perseverance to the improvement and correction of this machine; and, after spending a good deal of time upon it, found it was constructed upon principles so erroneous, that to improve it was impracticable. At length Mr. Meikle's own genius led him to a model, different in principle from the machines which had already been constructed. This was made in 1785; and in 1786 the first thrashing machine on the same principles was erected near Alloa, in Stirlingshire, by Mr. George Meikle, the son of the inventor. This machine, in its most improved state, is very simple; yet Mr. Louden, at this distance of time, says, 'none has been found to answer the purpose of separating the grain from the straw so well.' The two-horse thrashing machine of this gentleman, with the new invented yoking apparatus, is the smallest size of horse-engine which is made. From the limbers, or hanging pieces by which the cattle draw when working this machine, proceed the chains or ropes to which the horses are yoked, being united by an iron frame, placed upon a lever, having liberty to turn on a bolt; one end of each of two single ropes is fixed to this iron frame, and upon their other ends are fixed small blocks; in each of which is placed a running sheeve; and over these sheeves pass double ropes or chains. One horse is yoked to these chains at the one arm, and the other at the other, so that the chains or ropes by which they draw, being connected by the blocks, and the sheeves having liberty to move either way, if one of the horses relax, immediately the other presses the collar to his shoulders. For instance, if the horse yoked to the chains at one arm were to relax, then the one yoked at the other would instantly take up his rope, and pull the collar hard to his shoulders, so that the lazy horse must either exert himself, or be drawn backward; until the hooks to which he is yoked rest on the limbers. Thus each horse spurs up his fellow, they being both connected by the ropes and sheeves; their exertions are united so as to form one power applied to the machine, instead of two powers, independent of one another. By this means the draught will always press the collars equally upon the horses' shoulders, and though they are working in a circle, yet the strains of the draught must press fair, or equal, on their shoulders, without twisting their body to either side. This advantage cannot be obtained in the common way of yoking horses in a thrashing machine. THRASON'ICAL, adj. From Thraso, a boaster in old comedy. Boastful; bragging. Obsolete. His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. Shakspeare. general and patriot, the deliverer of his country THRASYBULUS, a renowned Athenian from the yoke of the thirty tyrants. He flourished about 294 B. C. THRASYMACHUS, a Carthaginian, who was the pupil of Isocrates and Plato, and became a public teacher at Athens; but, failing of the Juv. vii. 204. success he had expected, he hanged himself. THRASYMEDES, a son of Nestor, king of Pylos, by Anaxibia, daughter of Bias; one of the Grecian chiefs who went against Troy.— Hygin. Paus. ii. c. 26. lake of Etruria, near Perusium, and not far from THRASYMENUS, in ancient geography, a the Tiber. A bloody battle was fought near its bal, and the Romans under Flaminius, A. U. C. banks, between the Carthaginians under Hanni217, in which Hannibal was completely victorious, 15,000 Romans being killed, and 15,000 wounded.-Liv. Polyb., Strabo, 5. This lake is taken prisoners, while 10,000 fled mostly now called the lake of Perugia. Let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut With edge of penny cord and vile reproach. Shakspeare. Thus out of season threading dark-eyed night. Id. Being prest to the war, Even when the nave of the state was touched, They would not thread the gates. Id. Coriolanus. Behold the threaden sails, Borne with th' invisible and creeping wind, Though need urged me never so, Child on Trade. Though the slender thread of dyed silk looked on single seem devoid of redness, yet when numbers of these threads are brought together, their colour becomes notorious. Boyle. Will any freedom here from you be borne, Whose cloaths are threadbare, and whose cloaks are torn? Dryden's Juvenal. The art of pleasing is the skill of cutting to a thread betwixt flattery and ill-manners. L'Estrange. The eagerness and trembling of the fancy doth not always regularly follow the same even thread or discourse, but strikes upon some other thing that hath relation to it. Burnet. He who sat at a table with a sword hanging over his head but by one single thread or hair, surely had enough to check his appetite. South. The gout being a disease of the nervous parts, makes it so hard to cure; diseases are so as they are more remote in the thread of the motion of the fluids. Arbuthnot. The largest crooked needle, with a ligature of the size of that I have threaded it with, in taking up the spermatick vessels. Sharp's Surgery. Many writers of moral discourses run into state topics and threadbare quotations, not handling their subject fully and closely. Swift. A Thracian slave the porter's place maintained, Sworn foe to threadbare suppliants, and with pride His master's presence, nay, his name, denied. Harte. THREAT, or THREATEN, υ. α. THREAT ENER, n. s. THREATENING, Saxon drearian; Isl. thrætta. To menace; denounce evil; terrify, or attempt to THREATENINGLY, adv. | terrify: the derivaTHREAT FUL, adj. tives all correspond Dryden. Eneas their assault undaunted did abide, And thus to Lausus loud with friendly threatening cried. Id. Virgil. This day black omens threat the brightest fair That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care. Pope. How impossible would it be for a master, that thus interceded with God for his servants, to use any unkind threatenings towards them, to damn and curse the dregs of the creation! them as dogs and scoundrels, and treat them only as Law. THREATENING LETTERS. Knowingly to send any letter without a name, or with a fictitious name, demanding money, or any other valuable thing, or threatening, without any demand, to kill or fire the house of any person, is made felony without benefit of clergy. And sending letters, threatening to accuse any person of a crime punishable with death, transportation, pillory, or other infamous punishment, with a view to extort from him any money or other valuable chattels, is punishable, by stat. 30 Geo. II. c. 24, at the discretion of the court, with fine, imprisonment, pillory, whipping, or transporta tion for seven years. THREE, adj. THREE FOLD, THREE PENCE, N. s. THREE PENNY, adj. THREE PILED, THREE SCORE, THRICE, adv. one on another. Sax. nie; Goth. thriae: Welsh and Erse, tri; Latin tres. Two and one; any small number: the derivatives will be explained by the extracts : three piled means piled A three-fold cord is not easily broken. Ecclus. iv. 12. And thrice in vain to draw it did assay, Thrice he assayed it from his foot to draw, It booted nought to think, to rob him of his prey. Spenser. Prove this a prosperous day, the three-nooked world Shall bear the olive freely. Shakspeare. Antony and Cleopatra. Away, thou three-inched fool; I am no beast. Shakspeare. A base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, filthy, worsted-stocking knave. Id. King Lear. A threepence bowed would hire me, Old as I am, to queen it. ld. Henry VIII. Threepiled hyperboles; spruce affectation. Shakspeare. I saw him down; thrice up again and fighting. Id. Thrice noble lord, let me intreat of you To pardon me. Id. Taming of the Shrew. By a threefold justice the world hath been governed from the beginning: by a justice natural, by which the parents and elders of families governed their children, in which the obedience was called natural piety again, by a justice divine, drawn from the laws of God; and the obedience was called conscience; and lastly, by a justice civil, begotten by both the former; and the obedience to this we call duty. Raleigh. By chace our long-lived fathers earned their food; Toil strung the nerves and purified the blood: But we their sons, a pampered race of men, Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten. Dryden. Jove hurls the three-forked thunder from above. Addison. Laying a caustick, I made an escar the compass of a threepence, and gave vent to the matter. Wiseman's Surgery. A strait needle, such as glovers use, with a threeedged point, useful in sewing up dead bodies. Sharp. These three and three with osier bands we tied. Pope. Id. Odyssey. THREE RIVERS, DISTRICT OF, one of the divisions of Lower Canada, lies between those of Montreal and Quebec, and is bounded on the south by part of the line of 45° N. lat., and the ridge of mountains stretching to the north east; northward its limit is indefinite, or it may be presumed to have only the province boundary for its limit in that direction. Its breadth on the north side of the St. Lawrence, from the seigniory of Berthier to that of St. Anne, is fiftytwo miles and a half; but on the south side, from Sorel to Deschaillors, not more than fifty miles and a half. It contains the county of St. Maurice, and the greater part of Buckingham, forty seigniories and fiefs, thirty-two whole townships, part of eleven others that are divided by the district lines, thirty-two that are projected only, and twenty-two parishes. In the townships 824,679 acres have been granted in free and common soccage. The cultivated part of the seigniories may be taken at a little more than one-third; but the townships fall short of the same proportion. A threefold offering to his altar bring, A bull, a ram, a boar. THREE RIVERS, a town of Lower Canada, situated on the north-west side of the river St. Maurice, at its confluence with the St. Lawrence. It derives its name from the entrance into the former river, being separated, by two islands lying at the mouth, into three channels. The town plot covers nearly 400 acres, forming a front of rather more than 1300 yards on the bank of the St. Lawrence. It stands on an exceedingly light and sandy soil, which extends also over the environs. The shops and warehouses are numerous, wherein may be had British goods of all denominations, and several inns afford to travellers respectable accommodations. The principal public buildings are the Ursuline Convent, Protestant and Catholic churches, the court-house, jail, and barracks. THRENODY, or the Muses Thenodie, an ancient poem by Mr. James Adamson, containing many historical notices of Perth, and other places in Scotland. It was republished, with learned historical notes, by the late Mr. James Cant, in 1775. THREPSIPPAS, a son of Hercules by Panope. Apollod. THRESHOLD, n.s. Sax. percpald; Goth. throskold. The ground or step under the door; entrance; gate. Fair marching forth in honourable wise, Many men, that stumble at the threshold, Are well foretold that danger lurks within. Spenser. Shakspeare. Not better Than still at hell's dark threshold t' have sat watch, Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half-starved? Milton. There sought the queen's apartment, stood before The peacefold threshold, and besieged the door. Dryden. THRID, v. a. Corrupted from THREAD, which see. To slide through a narrow passage. Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair, Pope. Some hang upon the pendents of her ear. THRILL, v. a. & v. n. Saxon byɲlian; Swedish drilla. To pierce; bore; penetrate; drill: hence the quality of piercing: feel a piercing sensation; pain with such a sensation. The cruel word her tender heart so thrilled, That sudden cold did run through every vein, With dying fit, that down she fell for pain. And stormy horrour all her senses filled He pierced through his chaffed chest With thrilling point of deadly iron brand, And lanced his lordly heart. Spenser. The knight his thrillant spear again assayed In his brass-plated body to emboss. Id. Id. THRINAX, small Jamaica fan-palm, in botany, a genus of plants belonging to the natural class of palmæ, and order of stabellifolia. The calyx is sexdentate; there is no corolla; there are six stamina; the stigma is emarginate, and the berry monospermous. This plant was brought from Jamaica to Kew garden by Dr. William Wright. THRIPS, in entomology, a genus of insects belonging to the order of hemiptera. The rostrum is obscure, or so small as to be scarcely perceptible. The antennæ are filiform and as long as the thorax. The body is slender, and of equal thickness in its whole length. The abdomen is reflexible, or bent upwards. The four wings are extended, incumbent upon the back of the insect, narrow in proportion to their length, and cross one another at the same distance from their base. The tarsi of the feet are composed of only two articulations. There are eleven |