(Clarendon). 4. Viruous; good (Shakspeare). 5. Excellent: obsolete (Hooker). 6. Graceful; becoming: obsolete (Camden). GRACIOUSLY. ad. 1. Kindly; with kind condescension (Dryden). 2. In a pleasing manner.

GRACIOUSNESS. s. 1. Kind condescension (Clarendon). 2. Pleasing manner.

GRACULA. Grakle. In zoology, a genus of the class aves, order picæ. Bill convex, sharp-edged, nakedish at the base; tongue entire, sharpish, fleshy; feet ambulatory. Thirteen species, natives of India and South America; some of them of Europe: have a thick bill compressed at the sides, with small nostrils at the base, and sharp hooked claws; the middle toe of the fore-feet connected at the base to the outer. The following are the chief species: 1. G. religiosa. Minor grakle. Violet black; spot on the wings white; hind-head with a yellow naked band. There is another variety much larger. Both inhabit Asia: the first is ten and a half inches long; feeds on cherries, grapes, and other fruits; when tamed is exceedingly loquacious. See Nat. Hist. Pl. CXX.

2. G. barita. Boat-tailed grakle. Greyish; shoulders blue; quill-feathers outside green. Bill shortish, blackish, beneath paler, naked at the base; tail rounded and concave when folded, which it always is when on the wing; but flat when spread open. Inhabits America and the Antilles: thirteen inches long; feeds on insects and fruits.

3. G. cristellata. Crested grakle. Black; the first quill-feathers at the base, and tailfeathers at the tip white; bill yellow: plumage inclining to blue; irids orange; feathers of the front long, and erected at pleasure into a crest; greater quill-feathers, from the base to the middle, white, the other part deep blue; legs yellow. Inhabits China; eight and a half inches long; is very loquacious, and makes a hissing noise; feeds on rice, worms, and insects. 4. G. quiscala. Purple grakle. Violetblack; tail rounded. Another variety with the body white and black; head white; quill feathers and tail black; wings and tail purple, the latter long, and wedged. Inhabits Mexico, the warm parts of America and Jamaica. Male thirteen and a half, female eleven and a half inches long; sings finely; and builds in trees in unfrequented places; lays five or six blueish eggs with black stripes and spots; when domesticated feeds on all kinds of grain; and though very destructive to plantations, clears them in a considerable degree from noxious insects, on which account the breed has of late years been encouraged in the West Indies.

5. G. sturvina. Hoary; black on the crown and back; between the wings violet-black; tail and wings with a shade of green; the latter with a double white stripe. Female dirty ash; back brown; wings and tail deep-black. Inhabits the ozier banks of Dauria; in its nest and eggs resembles the thrush.

GRACULUS, in ornithology. See COR

VUS.

GRADATION, in general, the ascending step by step, or in a regular and uniform manner. Thus it denotes in logic a form of reasoning, otherwise called Sorites; in painting, a gradual and insensible change of colour, by the diminution of the tints and shades. In rhetoric, it denotes the same with Clinax.

GRA'DATORY. s. (gradus, Latin.) Steps from the cloister into the church (Ainsw). GRADIENT. a. (gradiens, Lat.) Walking; moving by steps (Wilkins).

GRADISCA, a town of Sclavonia, on the frontiers of Croatia, seated on the Save. Lat. 45. 21 N. Lon. 18. 39 E.

GRADISCA, a strong town of Germany, in the county of Goritz. Lat. 46. 6 N. Lon. 13. 14 E.

GRADO, in music, signifies degree. Thus, di grado is used to denote music, the notes of which rise or fall gradually from a space to its contiguous line, or from a line to its nearest space.

GRADUAL, GRADUALE, was anciently a church-book, containing divers prayers, rehearsed, or sung, after the epistle. After reading the epistle, the chantor ascended the ambo with his gradual, and rehearsed the prayers, &c. therein; being answered by the choir: whence the name gradual, on account of the steps or degrees of the ambo.

In the Romish church, the word gradual is still frequently used in the same sense.

GRADUAL, GRADUALIS, is also applied to the fifteen psalms sung among the Hebrews on the fifteen steps of the altar.

GRA'DUAL. a. (graduel, French.) Proceeding by degrees; advancing step by step (Milton).

GRADUAL. S. (gradus, Latin.) An order of steps (Dryden).

GRADUALITY. s. (from gradual.) Regular progression (Brown)

GRADUALLY. ad. (from gradual.) By degrees; in regular progression (Newton).

To GRADUATE. v. a. (graduer, French.) 1. To dignify with a degree in the university (Carew). 2. To mark with degrees (Derham). 3. To raise to a higher place in the scale of metals: a chymical term (Bacon). 4. Το heighten; to improve (Brown)

GRADUATE. S. (gradué, French.) One dignified with an academical degree, as à bachelor of arts, bachelor of laws, bachelor of divinity, master of arts, doctor, &c.

GRADUATION. s. (graduation, French.) 1. Regular progression by succession of degrecs (Grew). 2. Exaltation of qualities (Brown). 3. The act of conferring academical degrees.

GRADUATION OF MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS, is the process by which the arches of quadrants, theodolites, circular instruments, &c. are divided into degrees, and the minuter subdivisions. This is a branch of practical mechanics, which has been cultivated by the ingenious with great assiduity for more than a century, Hooke, Sharpe, Graham, Bird, Ramsden, Smeaton, Hindley,

and Troughton, being among the artists who have most distinguished themselves in producing the successive improvements. To trace the progression of their various methods with such minuteness and perspicuity as would be of real utility to the practical mechanic would lead us far beyond our narrow limits: we can only, therefore, refer the reader to Mr. Smeaton's paper in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. lxxvi. (New Abridgement, vol. xvi. p. 30-76), and to Mr. Troughton's, in the Phil. Transac. for 1809, Part 1. for the most ample information on this curious subject which has yet been published; and which, indeed, comprise together as well a history of all that has been done, as a clear description of

the best methods.

GRAFF. s. A ditch; a moat (Clarendon). GRAFF. GRAFT. s. (greffe, French.) A small branch inserted into the stock of another tree, and nourished by its sap, but bearing its own fruit; a young cion (Pope).

To GRAFF. TO GRAFT. v. a. (greffer, French.) 1. To insert a cion or branch of one tree into the stock of another (Dryden). 2. To propagate by insertion or inoculation. 3. To insert into a place or body to which it did hot originally belong (Romans). 4. To fill with an adscititious branch (Shaks.). 5. To join one thing so as to receive support from another (Swift).

GRAFFIŎ, in our old writers, a landgrave

or earl.

GRAFIGNY (Frances), á French lady, author of the Peruvian Letters, which have been translated into every European language, was the wife of a chamberlain of the duke of Lorrain. After the death of her husband she went to Paris with mademoiselle de Guise, where she was greatly admired and caressed for her talents, and where she died in 1758, at the age of 65.

GRA'FTER. s. (from graff or graft.) One who propagates fruit by grafting (Evelyn).

GRAFTING, or ENGRAFTING, in gardening, is the insertion of a shoot or scion of one plant into the stock or stem of another, so that both may unite and become one tree. The same process has been occasionally resorted to in zoology, sometimes for mere sport or curiosity, and sometimes for purposes of real utility. Thus the spur of a cock has been sometimes cut off and inserted into the ligaments upon his head and thus a sound tooth from one person has been extracted and inserted into the gum and socket of another upon the removal of a diseased tooth. The formative principle of the blood in both animals and vegetables produces new vessels, and the adventitious substance becomes a part of the general system: but it is never so completely assimilated to its general system as its innate members; and hence, in animal life, in a variety of diseases in which the general crasis of the fluids is attenuated, as in sea-scurvy for example, the new connection is often destroyed, and the adventitious part drops off. In some, and perhaps similar diseases of trees,

though the graft be not so far loosened as to drop off, the connection between itself and the original stock seems to be so considerably affected as to render its branches incapable of farther fructification. In the choice of grafts, the following observations are well worth attending to. We should be careful, 1st. That they are shoots of the former year. 2dly. That they are taken from healthy fruitful trees. And, 3dly. from the lateral or horizontal branches, and not from the perpendicular shoots. These grafts should be cut off from the trees before the buds begin to swell, which is generally three weeks or a month before the season for grafting; and hence, when cut off, they should be laid in the ground with the cut downwards, burying them half their length, and covering their tops with dry litter, to prevent their drying: if a small joint of the former year's wood be cut off with the scion, it will preserve it the better; and when it is grafted this may be removed; for the grafts must be cut to a proper length before they are inserted into the stocks; but till then, the shoots should remain their full length, as they were taken from the tree, which will preserve them better from striking. If these grafts be to be carried to a considerable distance, it will be proper to put their cut ends into a lump of clay, and to wrap them up in moss, which will preserve them fresh for a month at least: but these should be cut off earlier from the trees than those which are not to be carried to a distance.

The use of grafting is to propagate any curious sort of fruit, so as to be certain of the kind; which cannot be done by any other method: for as all our good fruits have been actually obtained from seeds, the seeds of these, when sown, will often degenerate, and produce such fruits as are not worth cultivating: but when shoots are taken from such trees as produce good fruit, these will never alter from their kind, whatever be the stock or tree on which they are grafted; for, though the grafts receive their nourishment from the stocks, they are never varied by them, but continue to produce the same kind of fruit as the tree from which they were taken.

General directions for Grafting.—All such trees as are of the same genus, i. e. which agree in their flower and fruit, will take upon each other; for instance, all nut-bearing trees may be safely grafted on each other; as may also the plum-bearing trees, under which head may be reckoned not only the several sorts of plums, but also the almond, peach, nectarine, apricot, &c. which agree exactly in their general cha racters, by which they are distinguished from all other trees: but many of these are very subject to emit large quantities of gum from such parts of them as are deeply cut and wounded, which, in the tender trees of this kind, viz. peaches and nectarines, being extremely hurtful, it is the best method in such cases to bud cr inoculate them. See INOCULATION.

All such trees as bear cones will do well upon each other, though they may differ in

be cut with a slope upward, and a part left in this slope like a tongue; which tongue must be inserted into the slit made in the slope of the stock, so as that the two rinds of both scion and stock may be equal and join together exactly; there should then be a ligature of bass to fasten the scion, so as that it may not be easily displaced; and afterwards it should be claved over, as in the former methods,

Root-Grafting, consists in grafting a fine fruitful branch upon a root. The manner of performing it is to take a graft of the tree designed to be propagated, and a small piece of the root of another tree of the same kind, or very near it, or pieces of roots cut from the tree transplanted, and whip-graft them, binding them well together. This tree may be planted where it is to stand, for the piece of root will draw sap and feed the graft, as the stock does in the other methods.

GRAFTING by approach. See INARCHING. GRAFTING (Escutcheon). See INOCU

LATION.

GRAHAM (George), clock and watch maker, the most ingenious and accurate artist of his time, was born in 1675. After his ap prenticeship Mr. Tompion received him into his family, purely on account of his merit; and treated him with a kind of parental affection as long as he lived. Beside his universally acknowledged skill in his profession, he was a complete mechanic and astronomer; the great mural arch in the observatory at Greenwich was made for Dr. Halley under his immediate inspection, and divided by his own hand: and from this incomparable original the best foreign instruments of the kind are copies made by English artists. The sector by which Dr. Bradley first discovered two new motions in the fixed stars was of his invention and fabric: and when the French academicians were sent to the north to ascertain the figure of the earth, Mr. Graham was thought the fittest person in Europe to supply them with instruments; those who went to the south were not so well furnished. He was for many years a member of the Royal Society, to which he communicated several ingenious and important discoveries, and regarded the advancement of science more than the accumulation of wealth. He died in 1751.

GRAHAM (Catherine Macaulay), an English authoress of some note, who wrote a history of England from James I. to the Brunswick line: a treatise on the Immutability of Truth; Letters on Education; and other works. She died in 1791.

GRAIL. s. (from grele, French.) Small particles of any kind (Spenser).

GRAIN s. (grain, French; granum, Lat.) 1. A single seed of corn (Shakspeare). 2. Corn (Dryden). 3. The seed of any fruit. 4. Any minute particle; any single body (Shaks.). 5. The smallest weight, of which in physic twenty make a scruple, and in Troy weight twenty-four make a pennyweight; and named because it is supposed of equal weight

with a grain of corn (Holder). 6. Any thing proverbially small (Wisdom). 7. GRAIN of allowance. Something indulged or remitted (Watts). 8. The direction of the fibres of wood, or other fibrous matter (Shakspeare). 9. The body of the wood as modified by the fibres (Dryden). 10. The body considered with respect to the form or direction of the constituent particles (Brown). 11. Died or stained substance (Spenser). 12. Temper; disposition; inclination (Hudibras). 13. The heart; the bottom (Hayward). 14. The form of the surface with regard to roughness and smoothness (Newton).

GRAIN (Jean Baptist le), a French historian, counsellor, and master of the requests to Mary de Medicis queen of France, was born in 1565, and died in 1643. By a clause in his will he directed that none of his descendents should entrust the education of their children to the jesuits. His Decades contain the History of Henry IV. and the History of Lewis XIII. to the death of the marshal d'Ancre.

GRAIN COAST, or MALAGUETTA, OF PEPPER COAST, a country of Guinea, bounded by the Sierra Leona country, which lies to the west, and the Ivory Coast, on the southeast, extending along the Atlantic, about 100 leagues. The climate is said to be unwholesome, especially to Europeans. The productions are peas, beans, gourds, lemons, oranges, and a kind of nut, with an exceedingly thick shell, a most delicious fruit, for which neither Europeans or natives have a name. The palm wine and dates of this country are in the greatest esteem. Cows, hogs, sheep, and goats, are also in great plenty; but what constitutes the chief wealth of the Grain Coast is the abundance of Guinea pepper, or grains of Paradise, it produces, called Malaguetta by the Portuguese, which draws a great trade, not only with all the neighbouring interior nations but with the Europeans also. The natives of this division are guilty of no excesses in eating or drinking, or indeed of intemperance in any kind of luxury.

GRAIN (Scarlet), in botany. See QUER

CUS.