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nsfer of the body or substance of a thing; distribution; as, the delivery of a fort, of hostages, of a criminal, of goods, of letters.

fold gradually, as a flower from a bud; hence, to bring through a succession of states or stages, each of which is preparatory to the next; to form or expand by a process of growth; to cause to change gradually from an embryo, or a lower state, to a higher state or form of being; as, sunshine and rain develop the bud i…

the doctrine that animals and plants possess the power of passing by slow and successive stages from a lower to a higher state of organization, and that all the higher forms of life now in existence were thus developed by uniform laws from lower forms, and are not the result of special creative acts. See the Note unde…

A four-wheeled public stagecoach, used in France.

A kind of stagecoach. "The Derby dilly." J. H. Frere.

A mail requiring double postage. -- Double note (Mus.), a note of double the length of the semibreve; a breve. See Breve. -- Double octave (Mus.), an interval composed of two octaves, or fifteen notes, in diatonic progression; a fifteenth. -- Double pica. See under Pica. -- Double play (Baseball), a play by which t…

One of the testicles of a hart or stag. [Spelt also doucet.] B. Jonson.

ce of artillery. [Obs.] Two or three shots, made at them by a couple of drakes, made them stagger. Clarendon.

me striking result. It is commonly designed to be spoken and represented by actors on the stage. A divine pastoral drama in the Song of Solomon. Milton.

in a carriage; to convey in a vehicle drawn by beasts; as, to drive a pair of horses or a stage; to drive a person to his own door. How . . . proud he was to drive such a brother! Thackeray.

A curtain which drops or falls in front of the stage of a theater, etc.

A genus (Lemna) of small plants, seen floating in great quantity on the surface of stagnant pools fresh water, and supposed to furnish food for ducks; -- called also duckmeat.

organs, but especially in the liver and lungs, which often cause death. It is the larval stage of the Tænia echinococcus, a small tapeworm peculiar to the dog.

Pertaining to, resembling, or characteristic of, the stag, or Cervus elaphus.

oose. The American elk, or wapiti (Cervus Canadensis), is closely related to the European stag. See Moose, and Wapiti. Irish elk (Paleon.), a large, extinct, Quaternary deer (Cervus giganteus) with widely spreading antlers. Its remains have been found beneath the peat of swamps in Ireland and England. See Illustration…

n. Pope. The transition from fetichism to polytheism seems a gradual process of which the stages elude close definition. Tylor.

als and plants; a study of the gradual development of the ovum until it reaches the adult stage.

A stage in the development of discophorous medusæ, when they first begin to swim about after being detached from the strobila. See Strobila.

A period of time in which a new order of things prevails; a signal stage of history; an epoch. Painting may truly be said to have opened the new era of culture. J. A. Symonds.

Before the ere long. A man, . . . following the stag, erelong slew him. Spenser. The world, erelong, a world of tears must weep. Milton.