Happy my eyes when they behold thy face: While with heavenly charity she spoke, Produce the wine that makes us bold, Dryden. Id. The ideas of goblins and sprights have no more to do with darkness than light; yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these often on the mind of a child, possibly he shall never be able to separate them again. Locke. The soul is clogged when she acts in conjunction with a companion so heavy; but, in dreams, observe with what a sprightliness and alacrity does she exert herself. Addison. Each morn they waked me with a sprightly lay: Of opening heaven they sung, and gladsome day. Of these am I who thy protection claim; Prior. Pope. Id. Id. Sax. rpningan; Teut. springe; Belg. and Swed. springen; Goth. and Swed. springá. SPRING LE, SPRING TIDE, To shoot; grow; SPRINGY, adj. arise out of the ground; begin to grow; proceed; arise; appear; issue; bound; leap; fly with elastic power: as a verb active, to start; rouse game; produce unexpectedly; discharge; leap or pass by leaping: as a noun substantive, the season of growth; or when the plants rise from winter; an elastic body; elastic force; active power; a leap; bound; issue of water from the earth; fountain; source; rise; and (obsolete) a youth: springe is a gin; noose: springhalt, a twitching lameness of the horse: springle, a noose: springtide, high tide; tide at the full moon: springy, elastic; full of springs. By the infinitness of the mersy of oure God, in the which he springyng up fro on high hath visited us. Wiclif. Luk. 1. Israel's servants digged in the valley, and found a well of springing water. Genesis xxvi. 19. When the day began to spring, they let her go. Judges. About the spring of the day, Samuel called Saul to the top of the house. 1 Samuel ix. 26. Ye shall eat this year such things as grow of themselves; and in the second year that which springeth of the same. 2 Kings. To satisfy the desolate ground, and cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth. Job xxxviii. 27. To them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. Matthew iv. 16. Other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased. Mark iv. 8. He called for a light, and sprang in, and fell before Paul. Acts. Hebrews vii. 14. Our Lord sprang out of Juda. Before the bull she pictured winged love, With his young brother sport, light fluttering Upon the waves, as each had been a dove; The one his bow and shafts, the other spring A burning tead about his head did move, As in their sire's new love both triumphing. Spenser. Not mistrusting, till these new curiosities sprong up, that ever any man would think our labour herein mispent, or the time wastefully consumed. Hooker. All blest secrets, All you unpublished virtues of the earth, Orpheus with his lute made trees, There had made a lasting spring. Id. Henry VIII. Now stop thy springs; my sea shall suck them dry, And swell so much the higher by their ebb. Id. Henry VI. As a woodcock to my own springe, Osrick, I'm justly killed with mine own treachery. Shakspeare. They've all new legs, and lame ones; one would take it, That never saw them pace before, the spavin Id. Henry VIII. And now, as other fawkners use, I spring a mistress, swear, write, sigh, and die; Can steer a ship becalmed; but he that will Ben Jonson's Catiline Ben Jonson. The spring visiteth not these quarters so timely as the eastern parts. Careu Fly, fly, prophane fogs! far hence fly away, Crashau Let the wide world his praises sing, Where Tagus and Euphrates spring; And from the Danube's frosty banks to those . Where from an unknown head great Nilus flows. Roscommon. My doors are hateful to my eyes, Filled and dammed up with gaping creditors, Watchful as fowlers when their game will spring. Otway. Where there is a continued endeavour of the parts of a body to put themselves into another state, the progress may be much more slow; since it was a great while before the texture of the corpuscles of the steel were so altered as to make them lose their former springiness. Boule. Mankind sprang from one common original; whence this tradition would be universally diffused. Tillotson. People discharge themselves of burdensome reflections, as of the cargo of a ship that has sprung a leak. L'Estrange. Some have been deceived into an opinion that the inheritance of rule over men, and property in things, sprang from the same original, and descend by the Locke. same rules. He that was sharp-sighted enough to see the configuration of the minute particles of the spring of a clock, and upon what peculiar impulse its elastick motion depends, would no doubt discover something very admirable. Id. He bathed himself in cold spring water in the midst of winter. Id. Nature is the same, and man is the same, has the same affections and passions, and the same springs that give them motion. Rymer. Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move. Pope. Where the sandy or gravelly lands are springy or wet, rather marl them for grass than corn. Mortimer's Husbandry. A link of horsehair, that will easily slip, fasten to the end of the stick that springs. Id. The mountain stag that springs From height to height, and bounds along the plains, Nor has a master to restrain his course, That mountain stag would Vanoe rather be Than be a slave. Philip's Briton. The spring must be made of good steel, well tempered; and the wider the two ends of the spring stand asunder, the wider it throws the chape of the vice open. Moxon's Mechanical Exercises. Most people die when the moon chiefly reigns, that is, in the night, or upon or near a springtide. Grew's Cosmologra. Our miners discovered several of the enemies' mines, who have sprung divers others which did little execution. Tatler. Do not blast my springing hopes, Which thy kind hand has planted in iny soul. Rowe. I sprung a mine, whereby the whole nest was overthrown. Addison's Spectator. A covey of partridges springing in our front, pu our infantry in disorder. Addison. A large cock pheasant he sprung in one of the neighbouring woods. Id. Spectator. Here I use a great deal of diligence before I can spring any thing; whereas in town, whilst I am following one character, I am crossed by another, that they puzzle the chase. Addison. The soul is gathered within herself, and recovers that spring, which is weakened when she operates more in concert with the body. Id. He that has such a burning zeal, and springs such mighty discoveries, must needs be an admirable paCollier. triot. This vast contraction and expansion seems unintelligible, by feigning the particles of air to be springu and ramous, or rolled up like hoops, or by any other means than a repulsive power. Newton. Bodies which are absolutely hard, or so soft as to he void of elasticity, will not rebound from one anocher, impenetrability makes them only stop. If two equal bodies meet directly in vacuo, they will by the laws of motion stop where they meet, lose their motion, and remain in rest; unless they be elastick, and receive new motion from their spring. Newton. See, awed by heaven, the blooming Hebrew flies The blood, defrauded of its nitrous food, Id. Creation. SPRING, in cosmography, denotes one of the seasons of the year; commencing, in the northern parts of the world, on the day the sun enters the first degree of Aries, which is about the tenth day of March, and ending when the sun leaves Gemini; or, more strictly and generally, the spring begins on the day when the distance of the sun's meridian altitude from the zenith, being on the increase, is at a medium between the greatest and least. The end of the spring coincides with the beginning of summer. See SUMMER. SPRING, in mechanics, denotes a thin piece of tempered steel, or other elastic substance, which, being wound up, serves to put machines in mo The reason of the quicker or slower termination of tion by its elasticity, or endeavours to unbend this distemper, arises from these three springs. Blackmore. Though the bundle of fibres which constitute the muscles may be small, the fibres may be strong and springy. Heroes of old, by rapine and by spoil, Id. In search of fame did all the world embroil; The air is a thin fluid body, endowed with elasticity and springiness, capable of condensation and rarefaction. Bentley. If our air had not been a springy body, no animal could have exercised the very function of respiration; and yet the ends of respiration are not served by that springiness, but by some other unknown quality. Id. Sermons. Now from beneath Maleas' airy height Aloft she sprung, and steered to Thebes her flight. Pope. Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I. Id. itself; such is the spring of a watch, clock, or the like. ral faculty, or endeavour, of certain bodies to reSPRING, ELATER, in physics, denotes a natuturn to their first state, after having been violently put out of the same by compressing, or bending them, or the like. This faculty is usually called by philosophers elastic force or elasticity. SPRINGS. Many have been the conjectures of philosophers concerning the origin of fountains, and great pains have been taken by the members of the Royal Society, and those of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, to ascertain the true cause of it. It was Aristotle's opinion, and held by most of the ancient philosophers after him, that the air contained in the caverns of the earth, being condensed by cold near its surface, was thereby changed into water; and that it made its way through where it could find a passage. And this transmutation of air into water strictly accords with the recent discoveries that water in fact is compounded of nothing else but two kinds of air, though it is hardly to be supposed that Aristotle had the most distant idea of this fact. Those who imagine, that fountains owe their origin to waters brought from the sea by subterraneous ducts, give a tolerable account how they lose their saltness by percolation as they pass through the earth; but they cannot explain by what power the water rises above the level of the sea to near the tops of mountains, where springs generally abound; it being contrary to the laws of hydrostatics that a fluid should rise in a tube above the level of its source. It was a generally received opinion, and much espoused by Mariotte, that the rise of springs is owing to the rains and melted snow.. The rain water, he says, which falls upon the hills and mountains, penetrating the surface, meets with clay or rocks contiguous to each other; along which it runs, without being able to penetrate them, till, being got to the bot tom of the mountain or to a considerable distance from the top, it breaks out of the ground, and forms springs. To examine this opinion Mr. Perrault, De la Hire, and D. Sideleau, endeavoured to make an estimate of the quantity of rain and snow that falls in a year, to see whether it would be sufficient to afford a quantity of water equal to that which is annually discharged into the sea by the rivers. The result of their enquiries was, that the quantity of rain and snow which fell in a year into a cylindrical vessel would fill it (if secured from evaporating) to the height of about nineteen inches; which quantity, D. Sideleau showed, was not sufficient to supply the rivers; for that those of England, Ireland, and Spain, discharge a greater quantity of water annually than the rain, according to that experiment, is able to supply. Another observation was made by them, that the quantity of water raised in vapor, one year with another, amounted to about thirty-two inches, which is thirteen more than falls in rain a plain indication that the water of fountains is not supplied by rain and melted snow. Thus the true cause of the origin of fountains remained undiscovered till Dr. Halley, in making his celestial observations upon the tops of the mountains at St. Helena, about 800 yards above the level of the sea, found that the quantity of vapor which fell there (even when the sky was clear) was so great that it very much impeded his observations, by covering his glasses with water every half quarter of an hour; and upon that he attempted to determine by experiment the quantity of vapor exhaled from the surface of the sea, as far as it rises from heat, to try whether that might be a sufficient supply for the water continually discharged by fountains. His experiment was as follows:-Ile took a vessel of water salted to the same degree with that of sea-water, in which he placed a thermometer; and, by means of a pan of coals, brought the water to the same degree of heat, which is observed to be that of the air in our hottest summer; this done he fixed the vessel of water, with the thermometer in it, to one end of a pair of scales, and exactly counterpoised it with weights on the other: then, at the end of two hours, he found, by the alteration made in the weight of the vessel, that about a sixtieth part of an inch of the depth of the water was gone off in vapor; and therefore, in twelve hours, one-tenth of an inch would have gone off. Now this accurate observer allows the Mediterranean Sea to be 40° long, and 4° broad, so that its whole surface is 160 square degrees; which must yield at least 5,280,000,000 tons of water: in which account no regard is had to the wind and the agitation of the surface of the sea, both which undoubtedly promote the evaporation. It remained now to compare this quantity of water with that which is daily conveyed into the same sea by the rivers. The only way to do which was to compare them with some known river; and accordingly he takes his computation from the river Thames; and, to avoid all objections, makes allowances, probably greater than were necessary. The Mediterranean receives he rivers Iberus, Rhone, Tiber, Po, Danube, Niester, Borysthenes, Tanais, and Nile. Each of these he supposes to bring down ten times as much water as the Thames, whereby he allows for smaller rivers which fall into the same sea. The Thames, then, he finds by mensuration to discharge about 20,300,000 tons of water aday. If therefore the above nine rivers yield ten times as much water as the Thames doth, it follows, that all of them together yield but 1,827,000,000 of tons in a day, which is little more than one-third of what is proved to be raised in vapor out of the Mediterranean in the same time. We have therefore a source abundantly sufficient for the supply of fountains. The doctor considers next the manner in which they are raised, and how they are condensed into water again, and conveyed to the sources of springs. He considers that if an atom of water was expanded into a shell or bubble, so as to be ten times as big in diameter as when it was water, that atom would become specifically lighter than air, and therefore would rise so long as the warmth which first separated it from the surface of the water should continue to distend it to the same degree; and, consequently, that vapors may be raised from the surface of the sea in that manner, till they arrive at a certain height in the atmosphere, at which they find air of equal specific gravity with themselves. Here they will float till, being condensed by cold, they become specifically heavier than the air, and fall down in dew; or being driven by the winds against the sides of mountains (many of which far surpass the usual height to which the vapors would of themselves ascend), are compelled by the stream of the air to mount up with it to the tops of them; where, being condensed into water, they presently precipitate, and gleeting down by the crannies of the stones, part of them enters into the caverns of the hills; which being once filled, all the overplus of water that comes thither runs over by the lowest place, and breaking out by the sides of the hills forms single springs. Many of these running down by the valleys between the ridges of the hills, and coming to unite, form little rivulets or brooks; many of these again meeting in one common valley, and gaining the plain ground, being grown less rapid, become a river; and many of these, being united in one common channel, make such streams as the Rhine and the Danube; which last is the sum of all those springs which break out on the south side of the Carpathian mountains, and on the north side of the immense ridge of the Alps. Thus one part of the vapors which are blown on the land is returned by the rivers into the sea whence it came. Another part falls into the sea before it reaches the land; and this is the reason why the rivers do not return so much water into the Mediterranean as is raised in vapor. A third part falls on the low lands, where affords nourishment to plants; yet it does not rest there, but is again exhaled in vapor by the action of the sun, and is either carried by the winds to the sea to fall in rain or dew there, or else to the mountains to become the sources of springs. Besides these causes some streams arise from rain and melted snow, which, subsiding through the surface of the earth, makes its way into certain cavities, and thence issues out in the form of springs; because the waters of several increase and diminish in proportion to the rain which falls: others again, especially such as are salt, and spring near the sea-shore, owe their origin to sea-water percolated through the earth; and some to both these causes. The above reasoning of Dr. Halley is confirmed by more recent discoveries. It is now found that, though water is a tolerable conductor of the electric fluid, dry earth is an electric per se, consequently the dry lands must always be in an electrified state compared with the ocean, unless in such particular cases as are mentioned under the article EARTHQUAKE. It is also well known that such bodies as are in an electrified state, whether plus or minus, attract vapor, or other light substances. Hence the vapors that are raised from the ocean must necessarily have a tendency to approach the land in great quantity, even without the assistance of the wind, though this last undoubtedly contributes much to the same purpose. The higher grounds are always in a more electrified state than the lower ones; and hence the vapors, having once left the ocean and approached the shore, are attracted by the high mountains; of which Mr. Pennant gives an instance in Snowdon. See SNOWDON. Hence we may see the reason why springs are so common in the neighbourhood of mountains, they being so advantageously formed in every respect for collecting and condensing the vapors into water. But now that the nature and composition of water have been so decisively proved, we need have no hesitation to ascribe the origin of all springs and fountains to this general cause, the meeting of oxygen and hydrogen, and the consequent conversion of these airs into water. This also is probably the cause of rain. The heat of springs is generally the same with the mean temperature of the atmosphere. The mean temperature of the south of England is 48°; in Scotland, near Edinburgh, it is 45°; in the north of Ireland it is 48°, and on the south coast about 51°. Dr. Hutton makes the mean heat of springs near Edinburgh 47°, and that of London 51°. At Upsal, in Sweden, it is 43°, and in Paris 53°. According to accurate experiments made by eminent philosophers, the heat of the springs in these different countries corresponds with the medium temperature. Though this coincidence of the heat of springs with the mean temperature of the climate where they flow seems to be a general fact, yet it admits of many exceptions. In many parts of the world there are springs which not only exceed the mean temperature, but even the strongest meridian heat ever known in the torrid regions. The following table shows the degrees of heat which different springs possess according to the experiments of philosophers :Highest Lowest deg. of deg. of heat. heat. Places. Springs. St. Vincent's, Gentleman's bath, 84 82 69 76 119 113 146 136 122 Bristol, Buxton, Matlock, Bath, King's bath, Aix-la-Chapelle, Barege, Pisa, 104 Caroline baths Prudel, 165 212 in Bohemia, Geyzer, Iceland, In cold countries, where congelation takes place, the heat of the earth is considerably above the freezing point, and continues so through the whole year. From experiments made in mines and deep pits this heat is uniform and stationary at a certain depth. The heat of these springs far exceeds the common heat of the internal parts of the earth; but the causes are not easy to determine. The subterranean heat has been ascribed to the electrical fluid, and to a great body of fire in the centre of the earth. The electrical fluid seems at least a probable cause, but as to the supposition that the heat of springs is owing to a central fire, it is too hypothetical to require any refutation. Hot springs are always found among combustible substances. It is well known that when water is mixed with the sulphuric acid, a degree of heat is produced superior to that of boiling water; and when water meets with pyrites a violent inflammation takes place. If, therefore, we could prove that these materials exist in the strata from which hot springs are derived, we should be enabled to give a satisfactory account of this curious phenomenon. As some ground for this supposition we may add, that most of the hot springs mentioned above have been found by analysis to be impregnated with sulphur, and some of them with iron. It must, however, be acknowledged that the hot springs of Iceland, which are 112°, the heat of boiling water, according to an accurate analysis of their contents by the ingenious Dr. Black, were neither found to contain iron nor sulphur. We must therefore continue to collect facts till the sciences of chemistry and mineralogy shall be so far advanced as to enable us to form a permanent theory on this subject. Springs are of different kinds. Some are perennial, or continue to flow during the whole year; others flow only during the rainy season; some ebb and flow. At Torbay there is one of this kind which ebbs and flows five or six inches every hour. There is another near Coriso in Italy which ebbed and flowed three times a day in the time of Pliny, and continues to do so still. A spring near Henly sometimes flows for two years together, and then dries up for an equal period. The cause of this is explained under HYDROSTATICS. SPRING BOCK. See CAPRA. SPRINGER, in zoology. See CAPRA. SPRINGFIELD, a post town and capital of Hampden county, Massachusetts, on the east side of the Connecticut; eighteen miles south of Northampton, twenty-eight north of Hartford, forty-eight W. S. W. of Worcester, and eightyeight west by south of Boston; is a pleasant and flourishing town, and contains a court house, a jail, a bank, a woollen manufactory, a rope walk, a furnace, two paper mills, two congregational churches, two public libraries, which together contain about 1000 volumes, and a printing office, from which is issued a weekly newspaper. Here is a large, pleasant, and handsome village, which has considerable trade, and contains a number of elegant houses. An excellent covered bridge, connecting this town with West Springfield, was carried away by the rise of the river in 1818. There is in this town, belonging to the United States, a very extensive establishment for the manufacture of arms. The arsenal is delightfully situated on an elevated plain about half a mile east of the village. The buildings are finely arranged around a level square of twenty acres, and make an elegant appearance. One building is 204 feet by thirty-two, of two stories, with a cupola, which affords an extensive and interesting view of Connecticut River and the surrounding country; another is 100 by forty; a third sixty by thirty-two; all of brick, two |