It

be dissolved, and there will remain only a number of saline substances. Pour the alcohol solution into a retort, and distil by the heat of a sandbath, till the liquid, after boiling some time, is reduced to the consistence of a thick syrup. The whole of the alcohol is now separated, and what remains in the retort crystallises as it cools. These crystals consist of the substance called urea. was first described by Rouelle the younger in 1773, under the name of the saponaceous extract of urine. He mentioned several of its properties; but very little was known of it till Fourcroy and Vauquelin published their experiments on it in 1799. These celebrated chemists have named it urea, which has been generally adopted. Urea obtained thus has the form of crystalline plates crossing each other in different directions. Its color is yellowish white. It has a fetid smell, somewhat resembling garlic or arsenic; its taste is strong and acrid, resembling that of ammoniacal salts. It is very viscid and difficult to cut, and has a good deal of resemblance to thick honey. When exposed to the open air, it very soon attracts moisture, and is converted into a thick brown liquid. It is extremely soluble in water; and during its evolution a considerable degree of cold is produced. Alcohol dissolves it with facility, but scarcely in so large a proportion as water. The alcohol solution yields crystals much more readily on evaporation than the solution in water. When nitric acid is dropped into a concentrated solution of urea in water, a great number of bright pearl-colored crystals are deposited, composed of urea and nitric acid. No other acid produces this singular effect. The concentrated solution of urea in water is brown; but it becomes yellow when diluted with a large quantity of water. The infusion of nutgalls gives it a yellowish brown color, but causes no precipitate. Neither does the infusion of tan produce any precipitate. When heat is applied to urea it very soon melts, swells up, and evaporates with an insupportably fetid odor. When distilled there comes over first benzoic acid; then carbonate of ammonia in crystals; some carbonated hydrogen gas; with traces of Prussic acid and oil; and there remains a large residuum, composed of charcoal, muriate of ammonia, and muriate of soda. The distillation is accompanied with an almost insupportably fetid alliaceous odor: 288 parts of urea yield by distillation 200 parts of carbonate of ammonia, ten parts of carbonated hydrogen gas, seven parts of charcoal, and sixty-eight parts of benzoic acid, muriate of soda and muriate of ammonia. The three last ingredients Fourcroy and Vauquelin consider as foreign substances, separated from the urine by the alcohol at the same time with the urea. Hence it follows that 100 parts of urea, when distilled, yield 92-027 carbonate of ammonia; 4.608 carbonated hydrogen gas; and 3-225 charcoal. Now 200 parts of carbonate of ammonia, according to Fourcroy and Vauquelin, are composed of eighty-six ammonia, ninety carbonic acid gas, and twenty-four water. Hence it follows that 100 parts of urea are composed of 39.5 oxygen, 32-5 azote, 14.7 carbon, 13.3 hydrogen. But it can scarcely be doubted that the water, which was found in the carbonate of ammonia, existed ready formed in the urea before the distillation. When the solution of urea in water is kept in a boiling heat, and new water is added as it evaporates, the urea is gradually decomposed, a very great quan

Uric, or lithic acid, is a substance quite distinct from urea in its composition.

VREDEN, a town of Prussian Westphalia, on the small river Brehkels, and the confines of Zutphen. Population 2000. Thirty miles W.S.W. of Munster.

URENA, in botany, Indian mallow, a genus of plants in the class of monodelphia, and order of polyandria; ranking acccording to the natural method in the thirty-sixth order, pomaceæ. U'RETHRA, n. s. French uretre; Gr. spypa. The passage of the urine.

Caruncles are loose flesh arising in the urethra.

URGE, v. a. & v. n.` URGENCY, n. s. URGENT, adj. URGER, n. s.

Wiseman.

Latin urgeo. To incite; push; press by motives; importune; provoke: as a ward: urgency is pressure: urgent, cogent; pres verb neuter to press forsing: the adverb and noun substantive corresponding.

Exodus, xii. 33.

The Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out in haste. He urged sore, With piercing words and pitiful implore, Him hasty to arise.

Spenser.

Urge the necessity and state of times, And be not peevish. Shakspeare. Richard III. This ever hath been that true cause of more wars

than upon all other occasions, though it least partakes of the urgent necessity of state.

Raleigh

what urges men most powerfully to forsake their sins. The heathens had but uncertain apprehensions of

Tillotson

This urges me to fight, and fires my hand. Dryden. Man and for ever? wretch! what wouldst thou have ?

Heir urges heir, like wave impelling wave. Pope. Being for some hours extremely pressed by the pe cessities of nature, I was under great difficulties between urgency and shame. Gulliver's Travels.

URGEL, a strong town of Spain, in Catalonia, on the river Segre. It is a bishop's see, and has 3200 inhabitants, with manufactures of linen and cotton. There is a vitriol mine in the neighbourhood. Seventy-eight miles N. N. W. of Barcelona, and 296 E. N. E. of Madrid.

URGEWONDER, n.s. A sort of grain. This barley is called by some urgewonder. Mortimer. URGUNGE, or URGHENZ, the name given to an extensive tract of territory on the Lower Oxus, near its junction with the Aral, and between that lake and the Caspian. It consists of an immense tract of desert, traversed by wandering and predatory hordes; but a few spots maintain a population collected into fortified towns. The principal of these bears the name of the region, and is about four miles in circuit, surrounded by walls of earth. One long street, covered above, forms a market, at which the little trade of the surrounding country is carried on.

URI, a canton in the central part of Switzerland, bounded on the north by Unterwalden, and on the east by the country of the Grisons. Its superficial extent is 640 square miles, but its population does not exceed 14,000, being thinly scattered amidst bleak and barren mountains, some of which attain an elevation of 8000, 9000, or 10,000 feet. This canton is traversed in all its extent by the Reuss: it contains a number of small lakes and mountain streams. The temperature necessarily varies with the degree of elevation. The road from Germany to Italy passing through this canton gives it the benefit of some transit trade. The canton is divided into the districts of Uri and Urseren; its government is democratic, and public business is transacted at the petty town of Altorf. The inhabitants are Catholics.

He in cœlestial panoply all armed, Of radiant urim, work divinely wrought.

Milton.

Urim and thummim were something in Aaron's breast-plate; but what, criticks and commentators are by no means agreed. The word urim signifies light, and thummim perfection. Newton's Notes on Milton. URIM AND THUMMIM, among the ancient Hebrews, a certain oracular manner of consulting God, which was done by the high priest dressed in his robes, and having on his pectoral or breastplate. Various have been the sentiments of commentators concerning the urim and thummim. Josephus and several others maintain that it meant the precious stones set in the high priest's breastplate, which, by extraordinary lustre, made known the will of God to those who consulted him. Spencer believes that the urim and thummim were two little golden figures shut up in the pectoral as in a purse, which gave responses with an articulate voice. In short there are as many opinions concerning the urim and thummim as there are particular authors that wrote about them. The safest opinion according to Broughton seems to be, that the words urim and thummim signify some divine virtue and power annexed to the breast plate of the high priest, by which an oraculous answer was obtained from God when he was consulted by the high priest; and that this was called urim and thummim to express the clearness and perfection which these oracular answers always carried with them; for urim signifies light,' and thummim 'perfection'; these answers not being imperfect and ambiguous like the heathen oracles, but clear and evident. The use made of the urim and thummim was to consult God in difficult cases relating to the whole state of Israel; and sometimes in cases relating to the king, the sanhedrim, the general of the army,, or some other great personage. See HEBREW. U'RINAL, n. s. & v. n. Fr. urine; Lat. urina. U'RINE, n. s. Animal water to make U'RINARY, adj. water: urinal, a bottle U'RINATIVE, in which urine is kept: U'RINOUS. urinary is relating to the urine urinative, provoking urine: urinous, of the nature of urine.

URINAL, in chemistry, is an oblong glass vessel, closed for making solutions, and so called for its resemblance to the glasses in which urine is kept. U'RINATOR, n. s. Fr. urinateur; Lat. urinator. A diver; one who searches under water.

Those relations of urinators belong only to those places where they have dived, which are always rocky. Ray.

URINE, in its natural state, is transparent, of a yellow color, a peculiar smell and saline taste. Its production as to quantity, and in some measure quality, depends on the seasons and the peculiar constitution of the individual, and is likewise modified by disease. It is observed that perspiration carries off more or less of the fluid which would else have passed off by urine; so that the profusion of the former is attended with a diminution of the latter.

From the alkaline smell of urine kept for a certain time, and other circumstances, it was formerly supposed to be an alkaline fluid; but, by its reddening paper stained blue with litmus or the juice of radishes, it appears to contain an excess of acid. The numerous researches made concerning urine have given the following as its component parts:1, water; 2, urea; 3, phosphoric acid; 4, 5, 6, 7, phosphates of lime, magnesia, soda, and ammonia; 8, 9, 10, 11, lithic, rosacic, benzoic, and carbonic acid; 12, carbonate of lime; 13, 14, muriates of soda and ammonia; 15, gelatin; 16, albumen; 17, resin; 18, sulphur. Muriate of potash may sometimes be detected in urine by cautiously dropping into it some tartaric acid; as may sulphate of soda, or of lime, by a solution of muriate of barytes, which will throw down sulphate of barytes together with its phosphate; and these may be separated by a sufficient quantity of muriatic acid, which will take up the latter.

Urine soon undergoes spontaneous changes, which are more or less speedy and extensive according to its state as well as the temperature of the air. Its smell, when fresh made and healthy, is somewhat fragrant; but this presently goes off and is succeeded by a peculiar odor termed urinous. As it begins to be decomposed its smell is not very unlike that of sour milk; but this soon changes to a fetid alkaline odor. It must be observed, however, that turpentine, asparagus, and many other vegetable substances taken as medicine, smell of the urine. Its tendency to putrefaction or used as food, have a very powerful effect on the depends almost wholly on the quantity of gelatin and albumen it contains; in many cases, where these are abundant, it comes on very quickly

indeed.

According to Berzelius, healthy human urine is composed of water 933, urea 30-10, sulphate of potash 371, sulphate of soda 3.16, phosphate of soda 2.94, muriate of soda 4:45, phosphate of ammonia 1.65, muriate of ammonia 1:50, free acetic acid, with lactate of ammonia, animal matter soluble in alcohol, urea adhering to the preceding, altogether 17-14, earthy phosphates, with a trace of

fluate of lime 10, uric acid 1, mucus of the bladder 0-32, silica 0-3, in 10000. The phosphate of ammonia and soda, obtained from urine by removing by alcohol the urea from its crystalised salts, was called fusible salt of urine, or microcosmic salt; and was much employed in experiments with the blowpipe. The changes produced in urine by disease are considerable, and of importance to be known. It is of a red color, small in quantity, and peculiarly acrid, in inflammatory diseases, but deposits no sediment on standing. Corrosive muriate of mercury throws down from it a copious precipitate. Toward the termination of such diseases it becomes more abundant, and deposits a copious pink-colored sediment, consisting of rosacic acid with a little phosphate of lime and uric acid.

In jaundice it contains a deep yellow-coloring matter, capable of staining linen. Muriatic acid renders it green, and this indicates the presence of bile. Sometimes, too, according to Fourcroy and Vauquelin, it contains a substance analogous to the yellow acid, which they formed by the action of nitric acid on muscular fibre. In hysterical affections it is copious, limpid, and colorless, containing much salt but scarcely any urea or gelatin. In dropsy the urine is generally loaded with albumen, so as to become milky, or even coagulate by heat, or on the addition of acids. In dropsy from diseased liver, however, no albumen is present, but the urine is scanty, high colored, and deposits the pink-colored sediment. In dyspepsy, or indigestion, the urine abounds in gelatin, and putrefies rapidly. In rickets the urine contains a great deal of a calcareous salt, which has been supposed to be phosphate of lime, but according to Bonhomme it is the oxalate.

Some instances are mentioned in which females have voided urine of a milky appearance, and containing a certain portion of the caseous part of milk. But among the most remarkable alterations of urine is that in the diabetes, when the urine is sometimes so loaded with sugar as to be capable of being fermented into a vinous liquor. Upwards of one-twelfth of its weight of sugar was extracted from some diabetic urine by Cruickshank, which was at the rate of twenty-nine ounces troy a day from one patient. In this disease, however, the urine, though always in very large quantity, is sometimes not sweet but insipid.

The urine of some animals, examined by Fourcroy, Vauquelin, and Rouelle, jun., appears to differ from that of man in wanting the phosphoric and lithic acids, and containing the benzoic. That of the horse, according to the former two, consists of benzoate of soda 024, carbonate of lime 011, carbonate of soda 009, muriate of potash 009, urea 007, water and mucilage 940. Giese, however, observes that the proportion of benzoate of soda varies greatly, so that sometimes scarcely any can be found. Notwithstanding the assertions of these chemists, that the urine of the horse contains no phosphoric acid, Giobert affirms that phosphorus may be made from it. That of the cow, according to Rouelle, contains carbonate, sulphate, and muriate of potash, benzoic acid and urea; that of the camel differed from it in affording no benzoic acid; that of the rabbit, according to Vauquelin, contains the carbonates of lime, magnesia, and potash, sulphates of potash and lime, muriate of potash, urea, gelatin, and sulphur. All these appear to contain some free alkali, as they turn syrup of violets green.

In the urine of domestic fowls Feureroy and Var quelin found lithic acid.

Urine has been employed for making phosphorus, volatile alkali, and sal ammoniac; moulds to the produce of nitre beds; and it is very useful in a putrid state for scouring woollens.

URINE, BLUE. In certain morbid conditions of the body a blue urine has been voided, which M. Braconnot has given an account of in the twentyninth volume of the Annales de Chimie et Physique, p. 252. It is a peculiar substance which gives the color. He proposes to call it cyanourine. It resembles the organic salifiable bases in combining with acids, in refusing to dissolve in alkalies, and in the large proportion of carbon which it

contains.

URN, n. s. Fr. urne; Lat. urna. Any vessel, of which the mouth is narrower than the body; in particular the ancient vessel in which the ashes of the human body were kept.

Shaksp.

Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, Tombless, with no remembrance over them. Vesta is not displeased, if her chaste urn Do with repaired fuel burn: But my saint frowns, though to her honoured name Caree. I consecrate a never-dying flame.

URN (Lat. urna). In modelling, sculpture, &c., a species of vase of a roundish form, but largest in the middle, destined, among the ancients, to receive and enclose the ashes of the dead; which destination its name, in fact, sufficiently indicates. It is curious to remark that the Romans often made use of Grecian vases, obtained by them in various ways, for this purpose, as is evident from those found in the tombs in the vicinity of Naples, which contain both bones and ashes. See VASE.

Urns are commonly met with in almost all collections of antiquities, and Montfauçon, in particular, has drawn and engraved a great number of them. In Millin's Monumens Inédits, vol. i., plates 3 and 20, two are published, extracted from the interesting and comprehensive collection of M. Van-Hoorn. The substances employed in the construction of these vessels are numerous. Amongst them are gold, bronze, glass, terra-cotta, marble, and porphyry. They were made of all manner of shapes and sizes; some had smooth surfaces, others were engraved in basso relievo. Many have been discovered bearing inscriptions on labels (see INSCRIPTION); others with the name only of the party to whose remains they were devoted. Several have no other character than the two letters D. M. (Diis Manibus, to the Shadowy Deities.) Others, again, present nothing more than the name of the artist by whom they were wrought, written either on the handle or at the bottom. The Egyp tians sometimes enclosed in urns their sacred birds, having first had them embalmed. These urns were generally covered with hieroglyphics. See MUMMY. The Romans were in the habit of applying the same term to certain vases destined to receive suffrages in elections. Little vessels have also occasionally been found in ancient tombs, denominated lacrymal urns.

VROON (Henry Cornelius), a Dutch painter. He excelled in sea-fights. He drew the designs for the tapestry in the house of lords, representing the destruction of the Spanish Armada. UROSCOPY, n. s. Gr. вром and σκέπτω· spection of urine. In this work, attempts will exceed performances; it

In

URQUHART (Sir Thomas), a learned Scottish antiquary. He wrote the life of the admirable Crichton (see CRICHTON), and some other tracts.

URQUIJO (Mariano Lewis), chevalier de, a modern Spanish minister, was born in Old Castile in 1768, and travelling when very young passed some years in England, where he is said to have acquired those liberal ideas which had much influence on his character. Returning home he published a translation of Voltaire's tragedy on the Death of Cæsar, with a Discourse on the Origin and present State of the Spanish Theatre. He was now employed under the secretary of state count d'Aranda; and, during the ministry of Godoy, became secretary of state for foreign affairs. In this important office he acted on the most enlightened principles, and succeeded in greatly curbing the power of the inquisition and of the clergy. Having, however, offended Godoy he was at length disgraced, and towards the close of 1800 confined at Pampeluna. He languished here several years in the most severe imprisonment, being debarred the use of paper, ink, books, and even light. Ferdinand VII., in 1808, declared the persecutions of Urquijo to be unjust, and he was set at liberty. He endeavoured to prevent that prince from taking his journey to Bayonne, but finally himself accepted the office of secretary of the junta of Spanish notables assembled at Bayonne, and afterwards that of minister of state. He had the satisfaction to see the inquisition suppressed by Buonaparte in 1808, and by the Cortes in 1813. After the reverses of the French in Spain he was obliged to follow king Joseph Buonaparte; and, in 1814, he fixed his residence at Paris. He died there May 3d, 1817.

URSINUS (Zacharius), an eminent Protestant divine, born at Breslaw in 1534. In 1558 he became president of the academy of Breslaw, which place he filled with honor: but, turning Calvinist, he went to Zurich, and was soon after made professor of divinity at Heidelberg. He next went to Nieustadt, on the invitation of prince Casimir, to fill the same office there. He died in 1585.

URSULINES, in church history, an order of nuns, founded originally by St. Angela of Brescia, in 1537 and so called from St. Ursula, to whom they were dedicated.

ÚRSUS (Nicolas Raimarus), a man of uncommon genius, born at Henstedt in Holstein, in 1550. He was first a swine herd, and did not learn to read and write till he was eighteen. But he soon after acquired Latin, Greek, French, mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy, and most of them without a teacher. He taught a new system of astronomy resembling that of Tycho Brahe. He died in 1590.

URSUS, the bear, a genus of quadrupeds belonging to the order of feræ. There are six fore teeth in the upper jaw, alternately hollow in the inside, and six in the under jaw, the two lateral ones being lobated. The dog-teeth are solitary and conical; the eyes are furnished with a nictitating membrane; the nose is prominent; and there is a crooked bone in the penis. There are ten species, viz. 1. U. Americanus, the American bear. The color is black; the throat and cheeks of a rusty brown. This species is spread through the whole of America, excepting Chili and Patagonia. They are

also found in Kamtschatka. They reject animal food, even though pressed by hunger, eating nothing but vegetables. They are remarkably fond of potatoes and maize. Dr. Gmelin says, however, that they also feed on fish. The head is more lengthened than that of the European bear; the ears are longer; the hair is more smooth and glossy, blacker and softer; the whole body is much smaller; the nose is longer and more pointed, and of a yellowish or rusty brown color. It is very cowardly, and never attacks mankind unless when provoked, or in defence of its young. It sometimes bites the natives of Kamtschatka when asleep, but never devours them.

2. U. arctos, the common bear, has strong, thick, and clumsy limbs; a very short tail; large feet; body covered with very long and shaggy hair; various in its color: the largest are of a rusty brown; the smallest of a deep black: some from the confines of Russia black, mixed with white hairs, called by the Germans silver bear; and some (but rarely) are found in Tartary of a pure white. They inhabit the north parts of Europe and Asia; the Alps of Switzerland, and the ci-devant Dauphine, or department of Drome, Isere, and Upper Alps; Japan and Ceylon; North America and Peru. The brown bears are sometimes carnivorous, and will destroy cattle and eat carrion; but their general food is roots, fruit, and vegetables; they will rob the fields of pease; and, when they are ripe, pluck great quantities up, beat the pease out of the husks on some hard place, eat them, and carry off the straw: they will also, during winter, break into the farmer's yard, and make great havock among his stock of oats; they are also particularly fond of honey. The flesh of a bear in autumn, when they are excessively fat by feeding on acorns and other mast, is delicate food; and that of the cubs still finer; but the paws of the old bears are reckoned the most exquisite morsel; the fat white, and very sweet; the oil excellent for strains and old pains. In the end of autumn, after they have fattened themselves to the greatest degree, the bears withdraw to their dens, where they continue for a great number of days in total inactivity and abstinence from food, having no other nourishment than what they get by sucking their feet, where the fat lodges in great abundance; their retreats are either in cliffs of rocks, in the deepest recesses of the thickest woods, or in the hollows of ancient trees, which they ascend and descend with surprising agility: as they lay in no winter provisions they are in a certain space of time forced from their retreats by hunger, and come out extremely lean: multitudes are killed annually in America for the sake of their flesh or skin; which last makes a considerable article of commerce. Mr. Kerr mentions five varieties, viz. i. U. arctos Albus, the white bear. ii. U. arctos fuscus, the brown bear of the Alps. iii. U. arctos griseus, the gray bear. iv. U. arctos niger, the black bear. v. U. arctos variegatus, the variegated bear, of various colors.

3. U. gulo, the glutton. The body and tail are from three feet and a half to four feet long, and of a glossy black or dark brown color, with a tawny line down the middle of the back. It is larger than the badger. This species inhabit the north parts of America, Asia, and Europe; but are seldom found in Germany or Poland. They dwell chiefly in mountains and forests. They propagate in Janu