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The lowest group of vertebrates; -- so called from the cirri around the mouth; the Leptocardia. See Amphioxus.

An apparatus consisting of a slowly revolving disk, usually regulated by clockwork, by means of wich the action of external agents, as light and gravity, on growing plants may be regulated or eliminated.

An extinct genus of Devonian ganoid fishes, having the broad plates about the head studded with berrylike tubercles.

The first milk secreted after delivery; biestings.

A mixture; a compound. [R.] A sad compost of more bitter than sweet. Hammond.

Manure; compost. [Obs.] Shak.

One of the Conirostres.

Belonging to the Conirostres.

A tribe of perching birds, including those which have a strong conical bill, as the finches.

An outpost consisting of four men, forming one of a single line of posts substituted for the more formal line of sentinels and line of pickets.

A rib; a side; a region or coast. [Obs.] Piers Plowman. Betwixt the costs of a ship. B. Jonson.

A rib of an animal or a human being.

Expense; cost. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Pertaining to the ribs or the sides of the body; as, costal nerves.

Having the nerves spring from the midrib.

[apples] consist more of air than water . . . ; others more of water than wind, as your costards and pomewaters. Muffett.

A costermonger.

Having ribs, or the appearance of ribs; (Bot.) having one or more longitudinal ribs.

To search after lodes. See Costeaning.

The process by which miners seek to discover metallic lodes. It consist in sinking small pits through the superficial deposits to the solid rock, and then driving from one pit to another across the direction of the vein, in such manner as to cross all the veins between the two pits.