for the purpose of computing time, the computation will be made from the day the instrument bears date. Enrolment of deeds for charitable purposes is necessary, and registration is required where landed property in Yorkshire and Middlesex is dealt with; and the revenue laws have imposed certain stamps upon every description of deeds, except where ships are transferred, the absence of which prevents them from being admissible in evidence. Stamps, however, can be impressed at any time, on payment of a fine of £10. After execution a deed may become void by erasure, interlineation, or other alteration in any part by the maker of the deed, or in any material part by a stranger; but, generally speaking, such alterations will be presumed to have been made before the execution, if nothing appear to the contrary, or there be no cause to suspect that it has been done in a clandestine manner. A grantee may also disclaim the grant or disagree thereto, and a deed may be destroyed or cancelled; but such destruction or cancellation will not revest the thing granted in the grantor, though all obligations established by the deed between the parties will be put an end to. If the deed has transferred property the property continues transferred, just as if the deed existed, until another deed of equal solemnity retransfers it. In the case of a bond, which is a deed by which a man binds himself, his heirs, executors, and administrators to pay a certain sum of money to another at a time named, or to do or not to do some specified act by a certain time, length of time was formerly no legal bar to an action upon it, yet it was a ground for a jury presuming that it had been satisfied.

In Scotland a deed may be defined as a legal instrument duly signed and delivered. Sealing is not required or used, except in deeds emanating from the crown or a corporation aggregate, but signing is as essential as sealing is in England. Scotch deeds are either attested or holograph. In attested deeds the signature of the grantor is attested by the signatures of two witnesses, who either see him sign or hear him acknowledge his signature. When the grantor cannot write, a notary or justice of peace must sign for him (see 37 & 38 Vict. c. 94, s. 38). Attested deeds conclude with a formal clause containing the number of pages, the time and place of execution, the names and designations of the witnesses, and a reference to any corrections, erasures, or the like that appear on the deed. All such if not so referred to will be held to have been made subsequent to execution, and may prove fatal to the validity of the deed. Holograph deeds are those which are not only subscribed by the grantor, but are in his own handwriting. They do not require attestation by witnesses; but they do not prove their own dates, and after twenty years their validity can only be proved by the writ or oath of the grantor. In last wills a clergyman may supply the place of a notary or justice of peace. Proper mercantile writings, such as bills, orders, and guarantees, require nothing beyond the genuine signature of the party. For valid delivery no particular ceremony is required. In many cases it is presumed-e.g. where the deed is in the hands of the grantee or of a neutral person, or in a public register. In some cases it is unnecessary, as in mutual contracts, in wills, and wherever the grantor has an interest in detaining the deed. All deeds may be registered for preservation; some-e.g. conveyances of real property-require registration for validity; many contain a consent to registration for execution, and these when duly registered may be enforced without action. This system of registration renders questions of delivery and custody of comparatively rare occurrence.

DEER (Cervidae) is a family of that group of the Artiodactyle Ungulata known as RUMINANTS. They are distinguished principally by the presence of deciduous solid branching horns in the male, the females, except in the case of the reindeer, being hornless. In the genus Hydropotes, containing the Water-deer of China, the horns are

entirely absent. The Hornless Musk-deer (Moschus) is now considered as the type of a distinct family, Moschida. The horns, or rather antlers, of the deer tribe are lost and renewed annually, increasing in size and in the number of their branches at each renewal, until a certain period. They are respectively seated upon an osseous peduncle or elevated base rising from each frontal bone, at its central point of ossification. These peduncles are enveloped in skin." "It is not until the beginning of the second year that the first pair of horns begin to make their appearance. At this epoch a new process commences; the skin enveloping the peduncles swells, its arteries enlarge, tides of blood rush to the head, and the whole system experiences a fresh stimulus. The horns are now budding, for on the top of these peduncles the arteries are depositing layers of osseous matter, particle by particle, with great rapidity; as they increase the skin increases in an equal ratio, still covering the budding antlers, and continues so to do until they have acquired their due development and solidity. This skin is a tissue of bloodvessels, and the courses of the large arteries from the head to the very extremity of the horns are imprinted on the latter in long furrows, which are never obliterated. In ordinary language the skin investing the antlers is termed velvet, being covered with a pile of fine close short hair. Suppose the antlers of the young deer now duly grown, and still invested with this vascular tissue, but the process is not yet completed. While this tender velvet remains, the deer can make no use of his duly acquired weapons, which are destined to bear the brunt of many a conflict with his compeers; it must therefore be removed, but without giving a sudden check to the current of blood rolling through this extent of skin, lest, by directing the tide to the brain or some internal organ, death be the result. The process then is this:-As soon as the antlers are complete (according to the age of the individual) the arteries at their base, where they join the permanent footstalk (always covered with skin), begin to deposit around it a burr or rough ring of bone, with notches through which the great arteries still pass. Gradually, however, the diameter of these openings is contracted by the deposition of additional matter, till at length the great arteries are compressed as by a ligature, and the circulation is effectually stopped. The velvet now dies for want of the vital fluid; it shrivels, dries, and peels off in shreds, and the animal assists in getting rid of it by rubbing his antlers against trees. They are now firm, hard, and white, and the stag bears them proudly, and brandishes them in defiance of his rivals. From the burr upwards these antlers are now no longer part and parcel of the system; they are extraneous, and held only by their mechanical continuity with the footstalk on which they were placed; hence their deciduous character, for it is a vital law that the system shall throw off all parts no longer intrinsically entering into the integrity of the whole. A process of absorption soon begins to take place just beneath the burr, removing particle after particle, till at length the antlers are separated, and fall by their own weight or by the slightest touch, leaving the living end of the footstalk exposed and slightly bleeding. This is immediately covered with a pellicle of skin, which soon thickens, and all is well. The return of spring brings with it a renewal of the whole process, and another pair of antlers branch forth. The common stag begins to acquire his antlers in the spring, and loses them early on the approach of the succeeding spring. His first antlers (second spring) are straight, small, and simple; he is now termed a brocket. The next pair are larger, and have a brow-antler directed forwards from the main stem, sometimes with one or two small branches above. The third pair have two forward stem-branches besides the browantlers, and one or two snags at the top. The fourth pair have the brow and stem antlers increased, and still more

against him for defamation of character.

Defamation is also punishable in certain cases by indictment and criminal information. Where the slanderous matter is spoken of a peer, the offence is termed scandalum magnatum, and is punishable by various statutes; but this mode of proceeding may be said to be obsolete.

În Scotland the law of defamation differs little if at all from that of England. It may be noticed, however, that the procedure by indictment is now in disuse, except when in England the offence would amount to scandalum magnatum.

DEFEA'SANCE (from the French verb défaire, to make void) is an instrument which counteracts the force or operation of some other deed, estate, or interest, upon the performance of certain conditions. Defeasances are of two kinds, the one applicable to freehold estates, the other to terms of years and executory estates, and to recognizances, bonds, and other executory interests. The former must be a collateral deed made at the same time with that to be defeated, and forming part of the same transaction. In this manner mortgages were formerly made, the mortgagor enfeoffing the mortgagee, and at the same time executing a deed of defeasance. Defeasances are now rarely used as applicable to titles, it being much better to make the conditions apparent on the deed itself.

Though the word defeasance is not now used in Scotland the legal instrument is well known under the name of back bond. It is often used to create mortgages or trusts in relation to real property, when it is desired to make the mortgagee or the trustee appear as the absolute proprietor.

DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, a title conferred on Henry VIII. by Pope Leo X. in 1521, for the vigour of his orthodoxy, especially as exhibited in his writings against Martin Luther. When Henry espoused the cause of the Reformation and suppressed the religious houses, the pope not only recalled the title but deposed him. Parliament, however, confirmed the title by 35 Henry VIII. c. 3, and it has ever since been used by the English sovereigns. Upon the sovereigns of Spain and France respectively the corresponding titles conferred were "Most Catholic" and Most Christian."

DEFILA'DING is that part of fortification the object of which is to determine (when the intended work would be commanded by eminences within the range of fire-arms) the directions or heights of the lines of rampart or parapet, so that the interior of the work may not be incommoded by a fire directed to it from such eminences.

The plan of a work which is open towards the rear being given, if it be required to determine the heights of a rampart or parapet in different places, so that the interior may be protected from the fire of the enemy on a commanding eminence beyond, the relative heights of the principal nequalities of the ground with respect to some horizontal plane, technically called the plane of comparison (which generally passes through the highest or the lowest point), must be found by the spirit level. But unless the work is of very great importance, the elevations of the parapets above the ground are generally determined by the eye thus-Pickets are planted in convenient places, chiefly at the angles of the intended work (the plan of which has been already traced on the ground), and on the summit of the commanding eminence, the picket in this place being about 8 feet high. The visual rays being supposed to proceed from the top of this picket to two or more points, which must be also 8 feet above the ground, in rear of the work, the intersections of these rays with the pickets planted on the magistral or ground line of the work will show the heights to which the parapet is to be raised at those places in order that the interior may be effectually protected.

A similar process is employed when it is required to protect the defenders of any post which is quite surrounded

by a parapet from the fire of the enemy on commanding eminences both in front and rear; in which case it is frequently necessary to raise in the interior of the work a mass of earth, which is called a traverse or a parados, according to its situation.

DEFINITION (Lat. definire, to mark out a boundary) is the process of stating the exact meaning of a word by means of other words. In a wider sense it is the complete and orderly statement of the contents of a notion. Aristotle calls definition the exact knowledge (gnorismos) of a substance. Opposite views are to be found in Hegel, who merges definition in the dialectical genesis of the notion; and Mill, who maintains that definition is merely the meaning of names, and not of things. All names, even those denoting a single abstract quality, which have a meaning may therefore be defined, if not from their content or connotation, then from their causes. Definition obviously merges into exposition, description, and explanation; while its main faults are too great width or narrowness, redundancy, tautology, figurative expression, or mere negations, or reference to subordinate notions.

DEFOE, DANIEL, the son of James Foe, was born in London in 1661. His father was a dissenter, and Daniel was educated at a dissenting academy in Newington Green. Defoe, as he styled himself (probably simply D. Foe at first), appeared as an author in' 1683, when he published a political pamphlet on the war then being carried on between the Austrians and the Turks; and two years afterwards his zeal for the maintenance of Protestantism induced him to join the Duke of Monmouth, but he had the good fortune to escape the fate that numbers of his companions suffered. Defoe was for some years engaged in trade, first as a hose-factor and wool dealer, and then on the banks of the Thames, in the neighbourhood of Tilbury Fort, in the manufacture of brick and pantiles, which until then had always been imported from Holland. His efforts in trade, however, were not successful; he became a bankrupt, but by most honourable exertions ultimately satisfied all his creditors. In the beginning of 1700 he published the "True-born Englishman," still a favourite poem, which so pleased King William that he admitted the author to an audience, and bestowed on him the more substantial reward of a present of money. Soon after the accession of Anne he published a bitterly ironical | pamphlet, called "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," which gave offence to many powerful bodies in the state. The high church party, at first frantic with delight, when they found out that they had been tricked, resented it as a libel; the dissenters considered the author serious, so that he had the humiliation of explaining his jest before his own friends would acknowledge him; the House of Commons (on 25th February, 1702-3) ordered the pamphlet to be burned by the common hangman; and the secretary of state offered a reward of £50 for his apprehension, describing him as a middle-sized spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark-brown hair, but wearing a wig, with a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth. He was shortly after caught, fined, pilloried, and imprisoned. "Thus," says he, "was I a second time ruined, for by this affair I lost above £3500." After he had been a prisoner for more than a year he was released, and in 1706 he was recommended by Lord Godolphin to the queen as a fit and proper person to send to Scotland to promote the Union; and for his services in this mission he had a pension for a short time. His political writings again got him into difficulties; for the publication of two papers, one entitled "What if the Queen should Die?" the other called "What if the Pretender should Come?" he was fined £800, and, in default of payment, again committed to Newgate. His second was not so long as his first imprisonment; he was liberated by the queen in November, 1713.

circumscissile); by pores, as in the poppy; by the splitting of the carpels along the inner edge, as in columbine; or both inner and outer, as in the pea (sutural); or, when the carpels are united in various ways, called septicidal if the carpels separate from one another, as in colchicum; loculicidal if the fruit opens by valves, each bearing a partition in its centre, as in the iris; septifragal when the partitions are broken, leaving the seeds, or some of them, attached to a central column, as in convolvulus.

DEIANI'RA or DEJANI'RA, wife of Heracles, was daughter of Althea and sister of Meleager. Her husband won her in a contest. Crossing a stream, he intrusted his wife to the centaur Nessus to carry over. Nessus behaved improperly, and Deianira's screams brought Heracles to her rescue. He shot the centaur with an arrow. Nessus, dying, dipped her scarf in his blood, poisoned as it was by the arrow, telling her it was made thereby a lovecharm. When afterwards Heracles had taken the Princess Iole prisoner, Deianira became jealous of her, and to secure her husband's affections gave him to wear the bloodstained scarf, trusting to the centaur's words. Nessus was fearfully avenged, for the scarf clung to Heracles, and the poison penetrated his skin, so that he died in agony. Deianira, in anguish at her unimagined crime, strangled herself.

DEIFICATION. See APOTHEOSIS.

DEI'RA, the southern part of the great North-English kingdom of Northumbria in early English (Anglo-Saxon) times, may be roughly described as nearly equivalent to Yorkshire. "Angles from Deira," said Gregory the Great when some handsome English slaves were shown him at Rome; "they are rather angels who need to be saved from the anger (de ira) of God;" and this, so legend says, is how St. Augustine came to be sent to Britain.

Deira was the first part of England conquered by the Danes in 866; and, with their later conquest of East Anglia, ever remained their stronghold. A century after, the wise King Edgar, in 966, made Deira into an earldom, with York for its capital; and the unity of government it thus gained it has retained as a county, in spite of its awkward size, to the present day.

DE'ISM (from Lat. Deus, God) has, etymologically speaking, the same meaning as theism (a word derived from the Greek Theos, God). Both words express belief in a divine being of some sort, but deism is, in its associations in England, the older and more historical word. It is inseparably associated with a school or series of writers who appeared in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and who aimed at establishing natural religion upon the basis of reason and free inquiry, and then bringing all positive or revealed religion to the test of this. The best known of these writers are Lord Herbert of Cherbury (died 1648); John Toland, the author of "Christianity not Mysterions" (1696); Lord Shaftesbury, Anthony Collins, Thomas Woolston, Matthew Tindal, and Viscount Bolingbroke. To these the replies have been many and able, the most prominent being the writings of Bishop Butler, which have long been regarded as one of the mainstays of orthodoxy. It might have been the religious quarrels of the time, or that the multiplicity of religious sects provoked distrust of the common basis on which all are founded, but whatever the reason it is certain that the seventeenth century, the period of the rise of deism, was essentially a time of the removal of ancient landmarks in other things besides theology. Perhaps the unprecedented changes in politics and law which characterized the time had much to do with the then prevailing tendency to cast aside in theology also the fetters of tradition and prescriptive right, of positive codes and scholastic systems. In what they received as natural religion the deists were for the most part agreed, though there was much difference in the degree of freedom with which they criticised the sacred narratives. Their creed was very aptly put by Lord Herbert in the early part of

the seventeenth century, and his articles continue to contain the fundamentals of their theology. These are-(1), that there is one supreme God; (2), that he is to be worshipped; (3), that worship consists chiefly of virtue and piety; (4), that we must repent of our sins and cease from them; and (5), that there are rewards and punishments here and hereafter. These truths are found in the chief religions of the world, and are consistent with such other characteristics of deism as disbelief in miracles, the denial of the inspiration of scripture, the rejection of the doctrine of the trinity, and with protests against mediatorship, atonement, and the imputed righteousness of Christ. The aim of deists is still to eliminate the miraculous from, theological belief, and to expel from the system of religious truth all debatable, difficult, or mysterious articles. Butler admitted the objections made against revelation, which he held to be esssentially mysterious, but pointed out that similar objections might be urged against natural theology, which had no miraculous evidence to support it. English deism may be regarded as the parent of German rationalism, and within the Church of England in modern times there has been a freedom in the criticism of revelation very closely allied to the inquiries of the more moderate section of deists. Theism yet retains its simple original meaning of a belief (any belief) in God. See THEISM.

DEK'KER, THOMAS, an Elizabethan dramatist, friend and friendly (though severe) critic of Ben Jonson. He was born in 1570, and died in 1638. His play of "Phaeton," and his comedies of "Fortunatus" and the "Shoemaker's Holiday," are works of great merit, and in his "Satiromastix," a satirical dramatic sketch, he broke a lance with "rare Ben Jonson" so stoutly that Ben Jonson retired from satirical comedy in consequence of it. In his latter days he did a good deal of pamphleteering under James I. Dekker is the author of these exquisitely quaint lines, occurring in "Fortunatus"

"Patience! why, 'tis the soul of peace,

Of all the virtues nearest kin to heaven;
It makes men look like gods. The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a suffrer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit.
The first true gentleman that ever breathed."

DELAGO'A or DALAGO'A BAY, on the eastern coast of Southern Africa, is a large bight, extending about 55 miles from north to south, and 20 from east to west, but the channel is not more than 5 miles wide. It constitutes not only the finest harbour on the east coast of Africa, but one of the finest in the world, and is situated in the department of Lourenco-Marques, an outlying territory of the Portuguese province of Mozambique, with which it is only connected by a narrow strip of uncolonized coast. Its geographical raison d'étre is to serve as the port of the Transvaal, from the frontier of which it is only distant some 40 miles. The north-east point of St. Mary's Island, the eastern entrance of the bay, is in 25° 58′ S. lat., and 33° 15' E. lon. Three important rivers, the Manica, Delagoa, and Machavanna, enter the bay. The Delagoa is navigable for vessels of 12 feet draught upwards of 40 miles, and for large boats about 200 miles inland. It is much frequented by whalers, as the bay abounds in whales. The Portuguese have a small fort on the western shore of the bay. Supplies are abundant and cheap; piece-goods, buttons, beads, cutlery, brass wire, old clothes, iron, copper, pipes, spirits, sugar, &c., are readily taken for bullocks, fowls, vegetables, fish, hippopotami teeth, gold-dust, ambergris, &c. Near the shore the country is low, marshy, and in summer unhealthy; but at no great distance it is high, healthful, and well cultivated.

The sovereignty over this valuable harbour formed for thirty years the subject of contention between Great Britain and Portugal. The case was finally decided in favour of Portugal and against Great Britain by the