axles of their chariots or to the felloes of the wheels, and were thus made to cut down those among whom the chariots were driven. In modern warfare scythes have been used in close combat, and make a formidable weapon. -As agricultural instruments, there was little difference in the forms of the ancient scythes and sickles from those of the present time, and they appear from the representations of them to have been as well adapted for their uses as any made up to the 17th century. The same forms appear in the illustrations of Strutt in his "Manners and Customs of the People of England," and were there in use more than 10 centuries ago. The snath or handle was however straight instead of crooked, and was furnished with only one instead of two of the short handles which are inserted into the snath to take hold of. Among the earliest recorded improvements in their manufacture is the stiffening of the back edge by welding to it a strip of iron. This was also one of the earliest American mechanical inventions, being made by Joseph Jenks, a skilful iron manufacturer, who established iron works in 1646 on the Saugus river in Lynn, Mass., and in May, 1655, received from the legislature a special grant or patent running 7 years for this improvement. In the notices of early iron works in New England, scythes are generally named among the most important products. Among the manufacturers especially noted for this and similar productions was Hugh Orr, a Scotchman, who emigrated to Bridgewater, Mass., in 1738, and there built a shop for this particular branch. He soon added to it the manufacture of axes, and afterward introduced both in Rhode Island and Connecticut. His son Robert Orr established the present mode of forging scythes with the trip hammer, and was the first to make iron shovels in Massachusetts. The business has since been largely conducted in Sutton, Worcester co., and also in several towns in Maine and New York. It is however gradually disappearing before the introduction of mowing and reaping machines. In England the manufacture has been an important one for the last 300 years, and has been particularly successful in the N. extremity of Derbyshire, extending about 6 m. S. from Sheffield. It was established there by a party of Flemings who were driven from the Netherlands, the scythe makers among them settling in the parish of Norton and the sickle makers in the adjoining one of Eckington. The best of these tools are still made in this neighborhood, and in Bristol and Dudley. In the New York market only English sickles are found, and few of these are sold. They are distinguished from scythes by the crescent form of the blade, and their comparatively short length, about 3 feet, while that of the scythe is from 3 to 5 feet. When used, the sickle is held in the right hand, and the grain being gathered up with the left arm is clipped off. The scythe is always swung free with both hands. The edge of the sickle which VOL. XIV.-30 comes next the ground as it is held is bevelled off and notched over the face of the bevel like a file, giving to the implement a serrated edge. English scythes also are imported into the United States. They differ from those made in this country by their very thin flat web of cast steel, which, if relieved from the iron rib riveted along the back edge, might be rolled up like a ribbon, and would when released spring out straight again. It is tempered so as to take an edge like a razor. These scythes are fitted only for very smooth lawns. SCYTHIA, in ancient geography, a vast area of indeterminate boundaries in eastern Europe and western Asia. The name was unknown to the native population, who, according to Herodotus, called themselves Scoloti. They are mentioned as Scythians by Hesiod, who describes them as living in wagons and feeding on mares' milk; and the same characteristics, but not the name, are given to them by Homer. Herodotus, the principal authority on the subject, describes Scythia as a square area, extending 4,000 stadia (nearly 500 miles) on every side, the southern boundary being the coast from the mouth of the Danube (not including the Tauric Chersonesus) to the sea of Azof (Niebuhr) or to the mouth of the Don (Rawlinson). On the N. were the nations called Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, and Melanchlani. Much of his Scythian geography is founded on misconceptions, and is unintelligible, but it probably comprehended the whole region from the Danube and the mountains E. of Transylvania to the lower Don. Subsequently the Herodotean Scythia was conquered by the Sarmatians, who gave their name to it; and the Greeks, having become acquainted through the conquests of Alexander with Asiatic tribes beyond the Jihoon (Oxus) and the Sihon (Jaxartes), transferred the name of Scythia to their country; so that the Scythia of Ptolemy and of Roman writers under the empire is exclusively Asiatic, including all northern Asia from the Volga to Serica (China). It was divided by the Imaus mountains (the western part of the Himalaya with its offshoots) into Scythia intra Imaum and Scythia extra Imaum.-Herodotus, who visited the Greek settlements on the Euxine, and made inquiries both of Scythians and Greeks, gives a detailed account of the Scythian people, dominion, and manners of his time. They were nomadic tribes, living on food derived from animals, migrating according to the wants of their cattle, keeping large troops of horses, excelling in cavalry exercises and archery, and worshipping the sword, an elevated iron cimeter, as their chief divinity, to which they sacrificed sheep, horses, and a portion of the prisoners taken in war. Hippocrates, more precisely than Herodotus, describes their personal appearance as different from that of the rest of mankind, and like to nothing but itself. "Their bodies are gross and fleshy; the joints are loose and yielding; the belly flabby; they have but little hair, and they all closely resemble one another." Among their barbarous rites were the following: The Scythian soldier drank the blood of the first man he overthrew in battle. The scalps and skins of slain enemies were preserved as martial decorations, and the skulls were formed into drinking cups. Once a year the chief of every horde filled a vast vat with wine, and divided it among the warriors in proportion to the number of enemies they had slain, those whose hands were unstained receiving none. They entombed their kings amid sacrifices of men and beasts, put out the eyes of all their slaves, gave credit to soothsayers, and had an extreme hatred of all foreign customs. Beside the nomadic hordes, forming the bulk of the population, to which the chiefs belonged, there were agricultural Scythians, with fixed abodes, raising and exporting corn and eating bread, who dwelt along the Dnieper (Borysthenes) and Bug (Hypanis), within the influence of the Greek settlements, and were probably regarded as degenerate brethren. Niebuhr supposes that they were a foreign race reduced to servitude. Repugnant from their habits and formidable from their force, with every man a practised horse-bowman, Thucydides declared that the Scythians would be irresistible if they could only unite.-Two principal events are recorded in their history. The successors of the Cimmerians in the order of migration westward, they drove the latter before them southward into Asia Minor, Ardys being then king of Lydia, and themselves invaded the Median empire, near the close of the 7th century B. C. Herodotus preserves the account of the poet Aristeas, that the Griffins of the extreme north initiated the migratory movement which finally expelled the Cimmerians from their territory, but heard himself another explanation, that the Scythians were driven across the Araxes and precipitated upon the Cimmerians in consequence of an unsuccessful war with the Massageta. The Scythian host pursued the fugitive tribes, but, mistaking the way, passed E. instead of W. of the Caucasus, and thus entered Media instead of Asia Minor. Niebuhr supposes, contrary to the Herodotean account, that the Cimmerians escaped into Asia Minor across the Thracian Bosporus, and that their expulsion was not connected with the Scythian invasion of Media. The Median king Cyaxares was besieging Nineveh, but desisted in order to meet the unexpected inroad of the Scythians. He was completely defeated, and they became masters of the country, holding cruel and oppressive sway for 28 years as far as Palestine and the borders of Egypt. At length their chiefs were slain when intoxicated at a banquet, the hordes were expelled, and Cyaxares resumed the throne. The second event in Scythian history is the invasion by Darius (about 516-515 B. C.), undertaken to avenge their inroad upon Media. He summoned the whole force of his empire, and marched through Thrace with an army of 730,000 horse and foot, while a fleet of 600 SEA ANEMONE. See ACTINIA. SEA CAT, the common name of the cartila ginous fishes of the order holocephala and family chimæroidei. They seem to form a group intermediate between the sturgeons and sharks: the dorsal cord is continuous, with cartilaginos neural arches and transverse processes; the skull is short and rounded, produced on each side into a process to which the lower jaw is connected instead of to an 08 quadratum; the upper jaw and palate are fused with the skull, without traces of suture; the upper jaw has broad plates or teeth, and the lower 2; the eyes very large and without lids; nasal cavities very large and convoluted, opening on the under side of the snout in front of the month, which is small; the branchise are not fixed their outer margin, and are covered by a sma operculum, adhering to the hyoid arch, with only a single aperture on each side behind the head, communicating interiorly with 5 branchial sacs opening separately into the pharynx; there is no air bladder, and the intestine has a spiral valve. The skin is covered with placoid granules; between the eyes is a fleshy club-shaped process, with serrated edge and ending in a spine, which somewhat resembles a crown, and has given rise to one of its popular names, "the king of the herrings," though in this as in many other instances the monarch preys upon his subjects. The ventrals are abdominal, the anal small, the pectorals powerful, and the tail heterocercal; the anterior dorsal is short, triangular, with a strong spine for the first ray, and is placed over the pectorals. They are oviparous, the large eggs being enclosed in a leathery capsule; the males are provided with trifid claspers. Linnæus gave the name of chimarida to the family from their singular appearance, as they at first sight, and in ill stuffed specimens, presented to him a seeming union of parts of different animals and of contradictory characters.-The northern sea cat (chimara monstrosa, Linn.) has a conical snout, the dorsals contiguous and reaching to the end of the tail, which is prolonged into a slender filament; the body is elongated and shark-like; the eyes have a greenish pupil surrounded by a white iris, and they shine, especially at night, like cats' eyes, whence the common name; the color is silvery with brown spots; the tail is nearly as long as the body. It attains a length of 3 or 4 feet, and is found in the North sea and northern Atlantic, where it pursues the shoals of herring and other migratory fish; it also feeds on jelly fishes and crustaceans; it has been taken on the coasts of Great Britain. The flesh is tough, but the Norwegians make use of the eggs as food; the oil of the liver is employed by them in diseases of the eyes and for wounds, and the end of the tail for pipe pickers. -The southern sea cat belongs to the genus callorhynchus (Gronov.), and is the C. australis (Gronov.); the snout ends in a gristly appendage, bent backward at the end so as to resemble a hoe; the anterior dorsal is very far forward over the pectorals, the 2d over the ventrals and reaching to the caudal, and the tail does not end in a filament; it is of about the same size as the northern animal, and silvery, tinged with yellowish brown; it inhabits the southern seas, and, like the other, in very deep water. SEA COW. See MANATEE. SEA CUCUMBER, one of the popular names of the holothuria, the highest order of the echinoderms, which are the highest class of radiated animals; the name is derived from their generally elongated and more or less cylindrical and warty form; they are also called sea slugs from their vermicular mode of creeping. The body has not the calcareous covering of the star fishes and sea urchins, but is rather soft, with a leathery skin sometimes furnished with calcareous plates or granules without spines; the mouth is at one end and the cloacal opening at the other, the former surrounded by branching and retractile tentacles supported on an osseous ring which forms the rudiment of an internal skeleton; the ambulacra (feet) or suckers are arranged usually in longitudinal rows on the sides of the body, alternating with spaces having no such apparatus, and corresponding to the spiny rows of star fishes and sea urchins; motion is effected principally by these suckers, the mouth forward. By the introduction or ejection of water at the posterior extremity the body may be made to assume great variations in length and width, and the general appearance externally is more that of an annelid than a radiate. Some of the genera (as synapta) have cutaneous anchor-like hooks by which they attach themselves, each inserted obliquely under a small subcutaneous scale perforated by a canal; the muscular layer under the skin is very thick, and so powerful in its constrictions that the animal can discharge all its viscera through the mouth, this operation perhaps in some cases depending partly on the sudden change of pressure when the specimen is quickly taken from a great depth. They have a well developed oesophageal ring, which sends off nerves to the body and tentacles; the intestinal canal is very long, retained in place by a kind of membranous mesentery, and generally unsymmetrical; they have a distinct vascular system, but no heart; the tubes for the water for respiration are much branched, and open from the cloaca; respiration is also effected partly by the tentacles around the mouth, which communicate with the aquiferous system, and by the water introduced into the visceral cavity. The ambulatory organs or feet are arranged either in 5 rows as on the ribs of a melon, or only on the lower surface, or on a kind of ventral disk; their motions at the bottom of the sea are aided also by the oral prehensile tentacles. The sexes are distinct; some multiply by fissuration, but most by means of eggs; in the first form the young has an oval ciliated body, like an infusorial animalcule, without external organs or distinction of parts; in the next larval change the organs are developed, at first in a bilateral manner (according to Müller), and then pass into the radiated type by a process of internal gemmation, receiving new locomotive organs in the ciliated fringe as they pass into the pupa form, from which the true echinoderm is developed.-The old genus holothuria (Linn.) has been variously subdivided by modern authors, whose names even cannot be introduced here. They are generally small on the New England coast, but attain a large size in the bay of Fundy and on the banks of Newfoundland; on the mud flats of the Florida reefs they are sometimes seen more than a foot long and 3 or 4 inches in circumference. All along the American coast is found the sclerodactyla Briareus (Ayres), from 3 to 6 inches long, of a dark brown color, with 10 very branching tentacles; it lives on muddy bottoms in shallow water among the roots of 208tera. The Cuvieria Fabricii (Dub. and Kor.; H. squamata, Fabr.) is about 3 inches long, of a bright brick-red, the color being readily imparted to alcohol and even to water; it is scaled and granulated above, and has 10 tentacles; it is generally caught on hooks, and occurs on the coast of New England. The chirodota arenata (Gould) is 5 to 6 inches long, club-shaped, ending posteriorly in a tube about the size of a crow quill; the color is light drab, with calcareous granules; it is found on our beaches after storms, and lives in shallow water. The botryodactyla grandis (Ayres) is very abundant in the bay of Fundy and on the banks of Newfoundland, and attains a length of 6 to 8 inches; when boiled it is very palatable, and no doubt could be made as important an article of trade as the tripang of the East Indies. The breeding season on our coast seems to be the winter and spring. The quinary arrangement prevails among holothurians as among other echinoderms. For a description of the 8 genera and 13 species of the American coast, all of which are different from those of Europe, see "Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History," vol. iv. (1851-22), where Dr. W. O. Ayres has carefully compared them.-Among the European species may be mentioned the H. (psolus) phantapus (Linn.), with an almost scaly envelope, and the feet of its central disk arranged in 3 series; the H. squamata (Fabr.), a small species, with the lower surface flat and soft with a great number of feet, and rough and scaly above; and the H. tremula (Gmel.), of the Mediterranean, blackish, bristled above, with numerous feet below, and 20 branched tentacles. The last named grows to a foot in length, and is one of the species eaten by the Italian fishermen. These animals were called by the ancient writers purgamenta maris and pudenda marina; their food consists of marine creatures, and sometimes very solid ones, as their powerful oral apparatus would indicate. Several species of holothurians are collected in the East Indies for food, under the name of bêche de mer or tripang, whose taking and preparation employ great numbers of the Malays and Polynesians; the best are found on reefs of mixed coral and sand in the Feejee group in 1 or 2 fathoms of water, and are obtained by diving; they are purchased in the fresh state of the natives for various articles of use or ornament, are first boiled in their own liquid, and are then dried on stages in large houses heated by fires. They meet with a ready sale in the Chinese markets as ingredients for rich soups, bringing from 10 to 50 cts. a pound ($13 to $60 a picul of 133 lbs.), according to quality. For an account of the mode of preparation, see vol. iii. of the Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition" under Capt. Wilkes, pp. 218-222, with a plate. From researches made on our coast it appears that the laminarian zone just below low water mark is the favorite resi dence of holothurians, though a few occur in deep water; synapta is found from low water mark to 6 or 7 fathoms, sclerodactyla and chirodota in very shoal places, Cucieria and plu in little deeper, the latter even to 18 fathoms, and botryodactyla and stereoderma in 30 to 50 fathoms on the banks of Newfoundland. Those found in shallow water are the most common on our coast. The echini live in deeper water, and the star fishes are the lowest both in halitat and in the radiated scale. SEA DEVIL. See GOOSE FISH. See PORPOISE. SEA HORSE, an osseous fish of the order lophobranchs (with tufted gills), of the family of pipe fishes, and of the genus hippocampus (Cuv.). The ordinal and family characters Lave been described in the articles LOPHOBRANCHS and PIPE FISH. In the present genus, which includes several species, the snout is prolonged and the head elevated posteriorly, somewhat resembling a miniature horse's head, the ears being represented by a spiny coronet on the oeciput; the orbits, pectoral ring, and the other rings of the mailed body are more or less spiny; the tail is without a fin and prehensile, and ty means of it they suspend themselves to ses weeds and other submarine objects; the eyes are prominent, and can be moved independently of each other and in opposite directions; the pouch in which the males carry the eggs til they are hatched opens at the commencement of the tail; the ventrals are absent, and the pectorals very small and just behind the head; there is a single short dorsal on the middle of the back, whose edge has a spiral motion; the females have a small anal, which is absent in the males; the mouth is terminal and without teeth. They inhabit all parts of the temperate and especially of the tropical oceans; the food consists of minute marine animals, epecially ova; a kind of hibernation has beeħ observed in the Mediterranean species by Rus coni; they swim vertically, with the tail ready to wind instantly around any object they meet, from which to watch and seize their tiny prey, There is one species in the British seas, the II. brevirostris (Cuv.), 6 inches or more in length, with much compressed, short, and deep body, divided by longitudinal and transverse ridges, with tubercles at the line of intersection; the snout is comparatively short; it can climb up the weeds, raising the body by means of the spines of the checks and chin; the color is pale ashy brown, with iridescent tints about the head. De Kay describes the H. Hudsonius, 5 to 6 inches long, from the coast of S. New Eng land and New York; it is of a yellowish brown color, with 12 rings in the body and 36 in the tail. Other species are found in the Mediter ranean, and more abundantly in the East Indies Their spiny armor protects them from proda ceons animals and from injury by the rocks sus, smaller, with most of the body furnished among which they delight to dwell. SEA HORSE. See WALRUS. SEA LEOPARD. See SEAL. SEA LION. See SEAL. with soft, flexible bristles of a golden color; and the D. verrucosus, with a warty and spiny skin. The atinga (D. hystrix, Bl.), of the East Indian, S. African, and South American coasts, is the SEA NETTLE. See ACALEPHE, and JELLY best known to seamen; it is caught in nets or FISH. SEA PIE. See OYSTER CATCHER. SEA PORCUPINE, a common name of the osseous fishes of the order plectognathi (with comb-like gills), family diodontidae or gymno donts, and genera diodon, tetraodon, &c., so called from the spines with which the body is studded. This order, which contains the sun fish, trunk fish, and file fish (described hereafter), has the internal skeleton partly ossified, and the skin covered with ganoid scales or spines; the maxillaries and intermaxillaries are wholly or in part united, and the upper jaw is in most immovably fixed to the cranium; there are no pancreatic cæca, no well developed ventrals, no duct to the air bladder, and only vestiges of ribs. In the family of gymnodonts the teeth are incorporated with the bone of the jaws, and resemble a parrot's beak with or without mesial division, their plates consisting of hard dentine adapted for bruising and cutting the crustaceans, mollusks, and sea weeds upon which they feed. The skin is thick, leathery, and armed with spines which stand out in every direction, like the quills of a porcupine or the prickles of a chestnut burr, when the body is inflated by filling with air the stomach, or more properly a large sac beneath this organ communicating with the oesophagus; the air is forced into this sac by swallowing; when thus distended the fish loses all command over its fins, and rolls over belly upward, floating at the mercy of the wind and waves; as it is a considerable time before the air can be sufficiently expelled to allow the fish to resume the full control of its movements, many are caught in this helpless condition; they emit a blowing sound when taken, from the expulsion of the air; the tail is short, and feeble as a locomotive organ; the spinal cord, according to Owen, is very short. Some of the family have no external openings to the nostrils, the nerve of smell being expanded on cutaneous tentacles. Their flesh is useless as food, and in some is poisonous. They are very tenacious of life, on account of the small size of the gill openings, and have a disagreeable odor which is retained even in alcohol for years; they are mostly inhabitants of tropical seas, and of moderate size, rarely more than 2 feet in length, with the diameter of the inflated body more than half of this.-In the genus diodon (Linn.) there is no mesial division of the jaws, and the teeth are apparently only 2; the spines are long, thin, sharp, with 2 root-like processes, and capable of erection. There are 9 species, of which 3 are described by Mitchill as occurring on the coasts of the United States, under the name of balloon fishes; these are the D. maculo-striatus, about 6 inches long, greenish spotted and striped with dark; the D. pilo on hooks, and is very difficult to handle from the sudden erection of the spines and the active motions of the body.-In tetraodon (Linn.) there is a mesial suture in the jaws, so that there appear to be 2 teeth above and 2 below; the spines are very short, and the head, back, and tail are generally smooth. The T. electricus (Paterson), with electric properties, has the skin entirely smooth. (See ELECTRIC FISHES.) The T. Pennantii (Yarr.), 14 feet long, has been caught on the coast of Cornwall; it is blue above, silvery white on the sides and below, with fins and tail brown; the abdomen only is covered with spines. There are several species on the American coast, of which the most common is T. turgidus (Mitch.), 6 to 14 inches long, olive-green above and whitish below; the abdomen lax, covered with prickles and capable of considerable distention; it is not uncommon about Martha's Vineyard, and on the Massachusetts and New York coasts, where it goes by the names of puffer and swell fish. Other names for this and the preceding genus are globe fish, urchin fish, and spine-belly. SEA RAVEN, an acanthopterous fish of the bullhead or sculpin family, and genus hemitripterus (Cuv.), one of the ugliest of this ugly group. The head is flattened, rough, and spiny; the pectorals are large and wing-like, advancing far under the throat, and with no free rays; ventrals under the pectorals, consisting of a spine and 3 or 4 soft rays; the 1st dorsal deeply notched, and all the fin rays simple; the head and jaws are furnished with numerous cutaneous branching filaments, which with the spines and huge mouth render the physiognomy of the fish any thing but pleasing; there are sharp, card-like teeth on the jaws, vomer, palate, and pharyngeal bones; the tongue is smooth, the branchiostegal rays 6, and the body without scales. The typical species is the common sea raven (H. Acadianus, Storer), called also the Acadian bullhead and deep water sculpin; it attains a length of 2 feet and a weight of 4 or 5 lbs. The colors vary exceedingly, presenting every shade of dark brown, blood red, pinkish purple, and yellowish brown, with various markings and bands; yellowish white below. The form is sculpin-like; the head is large, about of the whole length, with enormous gape and hideous appearance; the whole body above the lateral line is granulated, and thickly studded with tubercles; the 1st 3 rays of the 1st dorsal are longest, and with the other rays of this fin are fringed at the end. It is not unfrequently taken on hooks by cod fishermen in deep water around the ledges of Massachusetts bay, in Nova Scotia, the gulf of St. Lawrence, and the New England and New York coasts. Like the land raven, it is omniv |