Psalm xliv. 14.

Col. ii. 8..

Beware lest any man spoil you, through philosophy and vain deceit. Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven an enduring substance. Hebrews. England was infested with robbers and outlaws, which, lurking in woods, used to break forth to rob and spoil. Spenser. Yielding themselves upon the Turks' faith, for the safeguard of their liberty and goods, they were most injuriously spoiled of all that they had.

Knolles's History of the Turks. Having oft in battle vanquished Those spoilful Picts, and swarming Easterlings, Long time in peace his realm established.

Faerie Queene.

wise furnish most instances of an eminent and exalted piety.

conquer,

Law.

Came you then here, thus far, through waves, to To waste, to plunder, out of mere compassion? Is it humanity that prompts you on? Happy for us, and happy for you spoilers, Had your humanity ne er reached our world!

A. Philips.

The SPOIL, among the ancient Greeks, was divided among the whole army; only the general's share was largest; but among the Romans, the spoils belonged to the republic.

SPOKE, n. s. Sax. rpaca; Teut. speiche; Belg. spaak. The bar of a wheel that passes from the nave to the felly.

letium.

SPOLETIUM, in ancient geography, a city of Italy, in Umbria, which bravely withstood Hannibal, when in Italy. An inscription over the gates still commemorates this defeat of the great Carthaginian. Water was conveyed into the city from an adjacent mountain, by an aqueduct 230 yards above the foundation, relics of which still exist. It is now called Spoleto. See SpoLETO.

SPOLETO, a town of the ecclesiastical state, the capital of a duchy of the same name, situated on a hill near the Mareggia. The streets are extremely steep; and, though the houses are in general well built, there is no edifice either public or private that has any claim to distinction. The cathedral, occupying a comman ling situation, presents a front of five Gothic arches, supported by Grecian pillars; but the decorations of the interior display little taste. The castle, situated on a high hill which overlooks the town, is a vast stone building, surrounded with a rampart, and connected with the town by a bridge and aqueduct, thrown over a deep dell, and supported by arches of surprising height; the boldness of their construction has made

them be attributed to the Romans. Spoleto is a place of great antiquity, and was in vain attacked by the Carthaginians, after their victory at the lake Thrasymene. Its antiquities are two of the town gates, the ruins of a theatre, and those of a temple. The only manufacture is of hats. Fifteen miles S. S. E. of Foligno, and fifty-five N. N. E. of Rome.

SPOLIA OPIMA, Lat., in Roman antiquity, the richest and best of the spoils, which Romulus first set the example of dedicating to Jupiter. See ROME.

SPOLIATION, in ecclesiastical law, is an injury done by one clerk or incumbent to another, in taking the fruits of his benefice under a pretended title. It is remedied by a decree to account for the profits so taken. This injury, when the jus

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patronatus, or right of advowson, doth not come in debate, is cognizable in the spiritual court; as if a patron first presents A to a benefice, who is instituted and inducted thereto; and then, upon pretence of a vacancy, the same patron presents B to the same living, and he also obtains institution and induction. Now, if A disputes the fact of the vacancy, then that clerk who is kept out of the profits of the living, whichever it be, may sue the other in the spiritual court for spoliation or taking the profits of his benefice. And it shall there be tried, whether the living were or were not vacant; upon which the validity of the second clerk's pretensions must depend. But if the right of patronage comes at all into dispute, as if one patron presented A, and another patron presented B, there the ecclesiastical court has no cognizance, provided the tithes sued for amount to a fourth part of the value of the living, but may be prohibited at the instance of the patron by the king's writ of indicavit. So also if a clerk, without any color of title, ejects another from his parsonage, this injury must be redressed in the temporal courts; for it depends upon no question determinable by the spiritual law (as plurality of benefices or no plurality, vacancy or no vacancy), but is merely a civil injury.

SPOLTORO, a town of Naples, in Abruzzo Ultra; twelve miles south-east of Teramo.

SPON (Charles), M. D, a learned French physician, son of a merchant, and born at Lyons, in 1609. He showed a peculiar genius for Latin poetry, so early as his fourteenth year. He studied at Ulm; graduated at Montpelier in 1632; and became a member of the college of physicians at Lyons, where he practised with great success. He was made honorary physician to Louis XIV. in 1645. He published the Prognostics of Hippocrates, under the title of Sibylla Medica, in hexameter verse; and some Latin lambics. He maintained a learned correspondence with professor Guy Patin, and their letters were published after his death. He died 21st of February, 1684.

SPON (James), M. D., son of the doctor, was born at Lyons, in 1647. After a liberal education, he graduated at Montpelier in 1667, and joined the Faculty at Lyons in 1669. In 1675 and 1676 he made a voyage to Dalmatia, Greece, and the Levant, of which he wrote a fine account. He published many valuable works; as, 1. Recherches des Antiquités de Lyon, 1674, 8vo. 2. Ignotorum atque obscurorum Deorum Aræ, 1677, 8vo. 3. Voyage de la Grece, et du Levant, 1677, 3 vols. 12mo. 4. Histoire de la ville, et de l'état de Geneve, 1680, 2 vols. 12mo. &c. Being a Protestant, he was obliged to leave France, in 1685, on the repeal of the edict of Nantes, and set out for Zurich; but died at Vevay in 1686. He was a member of the academy of the Ricovrati, at Padua.

SPONDÆUS. See SPONDEE

SPONDANUS (Joannes), or John De Sponde, a learned Spaniard, born at Maulcon, in Biscay, in 1557. In his twentieth year he began a Commentary on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which was printed at Basil, in 1583, in folio, and dedicated to Henry king of Navarre, afterwards

Henry IV. and the Great of France. He also published Aristotle's Logic, Greek and Latin with notes, at Basil, 1583. In 1593 he followed the bad example of the Great Henry, by turning Papist, and published his Reasons; but they surely could not be half so weighty as those of Henry, as the peace of a kingdom did not depend on his abjuration of Protestant principles. He died in Biscay, in 1595.

SPONDANUS, or SPONDE (Henry), younger brother of John, was born in 1568, and educated at the College of the Reformers at Ortez, where he made a rapid progress in the languages and the canon and civil law. Henry IV. made him master of requests at Navarre. He also turned Catholic, in 1595. In 1600 he went to Rome, where he took orders, and was promoted by Paul V.; but in 1626 he was recalled to France by Louis XIII. and made bishop of Pamiers. He abridged and continued Baronius's Ecclesiastical Annals, from 1197 to 1640, and published in folio Annales Sacri a Mundi Creatione, ad ejusdem Redemptionem; with some other works. He died at Thoulouse in 1643. SPON'DEE, n. s. Fr. spondée; Lat. spondaus. A foot of two long syllables.

We see in the choice of the words the weight of the stone, and the striving to heave it up the mountain: Homer clogs the verse with spondees, and leaves the vowels open.

Broome.

SPONDIAS, Brasilian, or Jamaica plum, in botany, a genus of plants belonging to the class of decandria, and order of pentagynia. The calyx is quinquedentate. The corolla pentapetalous. The fruit contains a quinquelocular kernel. There are only two species; viz. S. mombia, and myrobalanus. But they are so much confounded in the description of different botanists that we cannot venture to describe them.

SPONDYLE, n. s. Fr. spondile; Lat. spondylus; Gr. σπovòdvλoç. A vertebra; a joint of the spine.

substance, without any spondyles, processes, or proIt hath for the spine or back-bone a cartilaginous

tuberances.

SPONGE, n. s., v. a. & v. n.~
SPONGER, n. s.
SPONGINESS,
SPON'GIOUS, adj.

Browne. Lat. spongia. A soft porous substance, supposed by some the nidus of

SPONG'Y. animals. It is remarkable for sucking up water. Too often written spunge: as a verb active to blot; wipe away: as a verb neuter suck in like a sponge a sponger is a sucker of this kind: spongy and spongious, full of cavities like a sponge.

They opened and washed part of their sponges.

Sandys.

Except between the words of translation and the mind of Scripture itself there be contradiction, very little difference should not seem an intolerable bleHooker. mish necessarily to be spunged out.

What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan What not put upon
His spungy officers, who shall bear the guilt?

When their drenched natures lie as in a death,

Shakspeare.

Sponges are gathered from the sides of rocks, being as a large but tough moss.

Bacon.

SPONGE, in zoology. See SPONGIA. SPONGIA, sponge, in zoology, a genus of animals belonging to the class of vermes, and order of zoophyta. It is fixed, flexible, and very torpid, growing in a variety of forms, composed either of reticulated fibres, or masses of small spines interwoven together, and clothed with a living gelatinous flesh, full of small mouths or holes on its surface, by which it sucks in and throws out the water. So early as the days of Aristotle sponges were supposed to possess animal life; the persons employed in collecting them having observed them shrink when torn from the rocks, thus exhibiting symptoms of sensation. The same opinion prevailed in the time of Pliny. But no attention was paid to the subject till count Marsigli examined them, and declared them vegetables. Dr. Peysonell, in a paper which he sent to the Royal Society in 1752, and in a second in 1757, affirmed they were not vegetables, but the production of animals; and accordingly described the animals, and the process which they performed in making the sponges. Mr. Ellis, in 1762, was at great pains to discover these animals. For this purpose he dissected the spongia urens, and was surprised to

find a great number of small worms of the genus of nereis or sea-scolopendra, which had pierced their way through the soft substance of the sponge in quest of a safe retreat. That this was really the case, he was fully assured, by inspecting a number of specimens of the same sort of sponge, just fresh from the sea. He put them in a glass filled with sea water; and then, instead of seeing any of the little animals which Dr. Peysonell described, he observed the papillæ, or small holes with which the papillæ are surrounded, contract and dilate themselves. He examined another variety of the same species of sponge, and plainly perceived the small tubes inspire and expire the water. He therefore concluded that the sponge is an animal, and that the ends or openings of receives its nourishment, and discharges its excrethe branched tubes are the mouths by which it ments. Fifty species have already been discovered, of which ten belong to the British coasts.

1. S. botryoides, grape sponge, is very tender and branched, as if in bunches; the bunches are hollow, and are made up of oblong oval figures having the appearance of grapes; and each bunch is open at top. The species of a bright, shining color. The openings at the top are evidently the mouths by which the animal imbibes and discharges moisture. When the surface is very much magnified, it appears covered with little masses of triple, equidistant, shining spines.

2. S. coronata, coronet sponge, is very small, consisting of a single tube surrounded at top by a crown of little spines. The tube is open at the top. The rays that compose the little crown are of a bright, shining, pearl color; the body is of a pale yellow. It has been found in the harbour of Emsworth, between Sussex and Hampshire.

3. S. cristata, or cock's-comb sponge, is flat, erect and soft, growing in the shape of cocks'combs, with rows of little holes along the tops, which project a little. It abounds on the rocks to the eastward of Hastings in Sussex, where i may be seen at low-water. It is commonly about three inches long, and two inches high, and of a pale yellowish color. When put into a glass vessel of sea water, it has been observed to suck in and squirt out the water through little mouths along the tops, giving evident signs of life.

4. S. dichotoma, dichotomous or forked sponge, is stiff, branched, with round, upright, elastic branches, covered with minute hairs. It is found on the coast of Norway, and also, according to Berkenhout, on the Cornish and Yorkshire coasts. It is of a pale yellow color, and full of very minute pores, guarded by minute spines.

5. S. fluviatilis, river sponge, is green, erect, brittle, and irregularly disposed in numerous branches. It abounds in many parts of Europe, in the fresh rivers of Russia and England, particularly in the river Thames. It scarcely exhibits any symptoms of life; is of a filthy smell: its pores or mouths are sometimes filled with green gelatinous globules. It differs very little from the lacustris.

6. S. lacustris, creeping sponge, has erect, cylindrical, and obtuse branches. It is found in lakes in Sweden and England.

7. S. oculata, or branched sponge, is delicately soft and very much branched; the branches are a little compressed, grow erect, and often united together. They have rows of cells on each margin that project a little. This species is of a pale yellow color, from five to ten inches high. The fibres are reticulated, and the flesh or gelatinous part is so tender that when it is taken out of the water it soon dries away. It is very common round the sea coast of Britain and Ireland. Along the edges and on the surface of the branches are rows of small papillary holes, through which the animal receives its nourishment.

8. S. palmata, palmated sponge, is like a hand with fingers a little divided at the top. The mouths are a little prominent, and irregularly disposed on the surface. It is found on the beach at Brighthelmstone. It is of a reddish color, inclining to yellow, and of the same soft woolly texture with the spongia oculata.

9. S. stuposa, tow sponge or downy branched sponge, is soft like tow, with round branches, and

covered with fine pointed hair. It is of a pale

yellow color, and about three inches high. It is frequently thrown on the shore at Hastings in Sussex. It is so closely covered with a fine down that the numerous small holes in its surface are not discernible.

10. S. tomentosa, or S. urens, stinging sponge, or crumb of bread sponge, is of many forms, full of pores, very brittle and soft, and interwoven with very minute spines. It is full of small protuberances, with a hole in each, by which it sucks in and throws out the water. It is very common on the British coast; and is frequently seen surrounding fucuses. It is found also on the shores of North America, Africa, and in the East Indies. When newly taken out of the sea it is of a bright orange color, and full of gelatinous flesh; but when dry it becomes whitish, and when broken has the appearance of crum of bread. If rubbed on the hand it will raise blisters; and if dried in an oven its power of stinging is much increased, especially that variety of it which is found on the sea coast of North America.

SPON SOR, n. s. Lat. sponsor. A surety; one who makes a promise or gives security for another.

In the baptism of a male there ought to be two males and one woman, and in the baptism of a female child two women and one man and these are called sponsors or sureties for their education in the

true christian faith.

Ayliffe's Parergon.

The sponsor ought to be of the same station with the person to whom he becomes surety.

The rash hermit, who with impious pray'r
Had been the sponsor of another's care.

SPONTANEOUS, adj.~
SPONTANEOUSLY, adv.
SPONTANEITY, n.s.
SPONTANEOUSNESS.

Broome.

Harte.

French spontanée; Lat. sponte. Voluntary; not compelled; acting without compulsion or restraint: the adverb and noun substantives corresponding.

Necessity and spontaneity may sometimes meet together, so may spontaneity and liberty; but real necessity and true liberty can never.

Bramhall against Hobbes.

They now came forth Spontaneous; for within them spirit moved Attendant on their lord.

Milton. Many analogal motions in animals, though I cannot call them voluntary, yet I see them spontaneous: I have reason to conclude that these are simply mechanical. Hale.

The sagacities and instinct of brutes, the spontaneousness of many of their animal motions, are not explicable, without supposing some active determinate power connexed to and inherent in their spirits, of a higher extraction than the bare natural modification of matter. Hale's Origin of Mankind.

Strict necessity they simple call; It so binds the will, that things foreknown By spontaneity, not choice, are done. And Roger loves to pitch the bar, Both legs and arms spontaneous move, Which was the thing I meant to prove.

While John for nine-pins does declare,

Dryden.

Prior.

This would be as impossible as that the lead of an edifice should naturally and spontaneously mount up to the root, while lighter materials employ themselves beneath it. Bentley.

Begin with sense, of every art the soul,
Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole;
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start even from difficulty, strike from chance;
Nature shall join you, time shall make it grow.

Pope. cheese as hard as a stone. Whey turns spontaneously acid, and the curd into Arbuthnot on Aliments. SPONTANEOUS INFLAMMATION, heat and conflagration produced in combustible bodies, from adventitious causes, without the application of fire. A paper on this subject which appeared in the Repertory of Arts, vol. ii. p. 425, induced the Rev. W. Tooke to publish some remarks in vol. iii. p. 95 of that work, from which, as the paper is long, we shall only give an extract, respecting the spontaneous inflammations of animal and vegetable substances. One Rüde,' says he, an apothecary at Bautzen, had prepared a pyrophorus from rye-bran and alum. Not long after he had made the discovery there broke out in the next village of Nauslitz a great fire, which did much mischief, and was said to have been occasioned by the treating of a sick cow in the cow-house. Mr. Rüde knew that the countrymen were used to lay an application of parched rye-bran to their cattle for curing the thick neck; he knew also that alum and rye-bran, by a proper process, yielded a pyrophorus; and now to try whether parched rye-bran alone would have the same effect he roasted a quantity of rye-bran by the fire till it had acquired the color of roasted coffee. This roasted bran he wrapped up in a linen cloth; in a few minutes there arose a strong smoke with a smell of burning. Soon after the rag grew as black as tinder, and the bran, now become hot, fell through it on the ground in little balls. Mr. Rude repeated the experiment, and always with the same result. Who now will doubt that the frequency of fires in cow-houses, which in those parts are mostly wooden buildings, is occasioned by this practice, of binding roasted bran about the necks of the cattle? Montet relates, in the Memoires de l' Académie de Paris, 1748, that animal substances kindle into flame; and that he himself has been witness to the spontaneous accension of dunghills.