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f the genus Nettapus, native of Africa, India, and Australia. -- Pygmy owl (Zoöl.), the gnome. Pygmy parrot (Zoöl.), any one of several species of very small green parrots (Nasiternæ), native of New Guinea and adjacent islands. They are not larger than sparrows. Pygmy chimpanzee, a species of anthropoid ape (Pan panis…

That branch of physical science which treats of the properties, phenomena, or effects of heat; also, a treatise on heat.

To ratify. [Obs.] "To rate the truce." Chapman. To rate a chronometer, to ascertain the exact rate of its gain or loss as compared with true time, so as to make an allowance or computation depended thereon.

An explanation or exposition of the principles of some opinion, action, hypothesis, phenomenon, or like; also, the principles themselves.

ch is offered or accepted as an explanation; the efficient cause of an occurrence or a phenomenon; a motive for an action or a determination; proof, more or less decisive, for an opinion or a conclusion; principle; efficient cause; final cause; ground of argument. I'll give him reasons for it. Shak. The reason of the m…

tend to recall or suggest one another; -- adopted by many philosophers to explain the phenomena of the association of ideas.

lass, a cause, source, a motive, reason, or ground of explanation; as, he referred the phenomena to electrical disturbances. To refer one's self, to have recourse; to betake one's self; to make application; to appeal. [Obs.] I'll refer me to all things sense. Shak.

fically: To attend earnestly to what passes within the mind; to attend to the facts or phenomena of consciousness; to use attention or earnest thought; to meditate; especially, to think in relation to moral truth or rules. We can not be said to reflect upon any external object, except so far as that object has been pre…

s, and differing from the sextant chiefly in having an entire circle. -- Reflecting galvanometer, a galvanometer in which the deflections of the needle are read by means of a mirror attached to it, which reflects a ray of light or the image of a scale; -- called also mirror galvanometer. -- Reflecting goniometer. See…

ring the crystal, from which it issues in the form of a hollow cylinder. This singular phenomenon was first discovered by Sir W. R. Hamilton by mathematical reasoning alone, unaided by experiment. -- Differential refraction (Astron.), the change of the apparent place of one object relative to a second object near it,…

for measuring currents, especially the force or intensity of electrical currents; a galvanometer.

An instrument for marking time in musical movements. See Metronome.

rown down the Tarpeian Rock With rigorous hands. Shak. We do not connect the scattered phenomena into their rigorous unity. De Quincey.

ction whose values recur at fixed intervals as the variable uniformly increases. The trigonomertic functions, as sin x, tan x, etc., are periodic functions. Exponential functions are also periodic, having an imaginary period, and the elliptic functions have not only a real but an imaginary period, and are hence called…

food from the stomach after it has been swallowed, -- occasionally oberved as a morbid phenomenon in man.

e in outer space, but they are generally presumed to be misinterpretations of ordinary phenomena, illusions or imaginary objects. Fraudulent photographs purporting to show flying saucers are published from time to time.

Especially, such knowledge when it relates to the physical world and its phenomena, the nature, constitution, and forces of matter, the qualities and function of living tissues, etc.; -- called also natural science, and physical science. Voltaire hardly left a single corner of the field entirely unexplored in science,…

; the number expressing the ratio line of this line to the radius of the circle. See Trigonometrical function, under Function.

The mensuration of such phenomena of earthquakes as can be expressed in numbers, or by their relation to the coördinates of space.

ve consciousness; the man viewed by his own cognition as the subject of all his mental phenomena, the agent in his own activities, the subject of his own feelings, and the possessor of capacities and character; a person as a distinct individual; a being regarded as having personality. "Those who liked their real selves…