SHEEPHAVEN, a harbour on the north coast of the county of Donegal, Ireland, situated west of the Mulroy, and separated from it by a long and narrow peninsula. The surrounding country is mountainous and thinly inhabited; nor is there any town of consequence in the neighbourhood. Dunfanaghy, near Hornhead, is no more than a village, though ruins near it seem to indicate that it was formerly much larger. The siliceous sand found in this district is of excellent quality for making glass, and it is carried to Belfast for that purpose. About a century ago, an elegant edifice, according to the taste of that age, says Dr. W. Hamilton, was built on the peninsula, between the harbours of Sheephaven and Mulroy, which at present stands like Tadmor of the east, the solitary wonder of a surrounding desert.' The gardens are totally denuded of trees and shrubs by the fury of the western winds; their walls, unable to sustain the mass of overbearing sands, have bent before the accumulated pressure; and, overthrown in numberless places, have given free passage to this restless enemy of all fertility. The courts, the flights of steps, the terraces, are all involved in equal ruin; and their limits only discoverable by tops of embattled walls, visible amid hills of sand. The mansion itself, yielding to the unconquerable fury of the tempest, approaches fast to destruction; the freighted whirlwind, howling through every avenue and crevice, bears incessantly along its drifted burden, which has already filled the lower apartments of the building, and begins now to rise above the once elevated thresholds. Fields, fences, villages, involved in common desolation, are reduced to one undistinguishable scene of sterile uniformity, and 1200 acres of land are said thus to have been buried within a short period in irrecoverable ruin.'-Transactions of the Irish Academy, vol. vi. SHEER, adj. Saxon. rcyn. Pure; clear; unmingled: clean; quick; at once. If she say, I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying'st rogue in Shakspeare. Christendom. Thrown by angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal battlements; from morn To noon he fell from noon to dewy eve, A summer's day; and with the setting sun Dropped from the zenith, like a falling star, On Lemnos. Milton. The sword of Satan with steep force to smite Descending, and in half cut sheer. Id. Sheer argument is not the talent of the man; little wrested sentences are the bladders which bear him up, and he sinks downright, when he once pretends to swim without them. Atterbury. SHEERGOTTA, a town of Hindostan in the province of Bahar, stands at the foot of a steep and narrow pass through the Ramgur hills, being part of the great military road from Cal cutta to Benares. It takes its name from the number of tigers which formerly infested the route. Long. 84° 55′ E., lat. 24° 32′ N. SHEERHORN, a lofty mountain of Switzerland, in the canton of Uri, ten miles south-east of Altorf. It rises to the height of 10,700 feet, and at the top is divided into two parts. It is covered with glaciers of great extent. Long. 8° 40' 5" E., lat 46° 49′ 50′′ N. SHEERNESS, a market-town on the northwest point of Sheppey-Island, where the Medway joins the Thames, forty-six miles and a half east from London, in the parish of Minster. In 1667 this place was taken by the Dutch. It has now a regular fortification and garrison, under a governor, lieutenant-governor, fortmajor, and other officers, and such a line of heavy cannon, commanding the mouth of the river, as to bid defiance to any force that may attempt to pass it. The harbour, dock-yard, and public buildings have of late been much enlarged and improved; a chapel has also been erected at the expense of government. The town contains several good streets. Here is an ordnance-office, with apartments for the different officers, all ordnance stores being delivered here to the fleet stationed at the Nore; here is also a yard for building ships, and a dock intended chiefly for repairing. It has a neat chapel of ease to the mother church. Market on Saturday. SHEERS, a name given to an engine used to hoist or displace the lower masts of a ship. The sheers employed for this purpose in the royal navy are composed of several long masts, whose heels rest upon the side of the hulk, and having their heads declining outward from the perpendicular, so as to hang over the vessel whose masts are to be fixed or displaced. The tackles, which extend from the head of the mast to the sheer-heads, are intended to pull in the latter toward the mast head, particularly when they are charged with the weight of a mast after it is raised out of any ship, which is performed by strong tackles depending from the sheer-heads. The effort of these tackles is produced by two capsterns, fixed on the deck for this purpose. In merchant ships this machine is composed of two masts or props, erected in the same vessel wherein the mast is to be planted, or whence it is to be removed. The lower ends of these props rest on the opposite sides of the deck, and their upper parts are fastened across, so as that a tackle which hangs from the intersection may be almost perpendicularly above the station of the mast to which the mechanical powers are applied. These sheets are secured by stays which extend forward and aft to the opposite extremities of the vessel. SHEET, n. s. & v. a. Sax. rceat. A large broad piece of linen; any thing expanded; a single fold of such a thing: to furnish with sheets. He saw heaven opened, and a vessel descending unto him, as a great sheet, knit at the four corners. Acts x. 11 If I die before thee, shroud me Shakspeare paper, As could be crammed up in a sheet of Like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, The bark of trees thou browsedst. the sail. Id Ia. The little word behind the back, and undoing whisper, like pulling off a sheet-rope at sea, slackens Suckling Fierce Boreas drove against his flying sails, And rent the sheets. Some unequal bride in nobler sheets Receives her lord. Dryden. Id When I first put pen to paper, I thought all I s.ould have to say would have been contained in one sheet of paper. Locke. I let the refracted light fall perpendicularly upon a sheet of white paper upon the opposite wall. Newton's Opticks. To this the following sheets are intended for a full and distinct answer. Waterland. SHEET, in sea-language, a rope fastened to one or both the lower confines of a sail, to extend and retain it in a particular station. When a ship sails with a lateral wind, the lower corner of the main and fore-sail are fastened by a tack and a sheet; the former being to windward, and the latter to leeward; the tack, however, is entirely diffused with a stern-wind, whereas the sail is never spread without the assistance of one or both of the sheets. The stay-sails and studding-sails have only one tack and one sheet each; the stay-sail tacks are always fastened forward, and the sheet drawn aft; but the studding-sail tack draws the under clew of the sail to the extremity of the boom, whereas the sheet is employed to extend the inmost. SHEFFIELD (John), duke of Buckingham, an eminent writer of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of great personal bravery, and an able minister of state, was born about 1650. He lost his father at nine years of age, and his mother marrying lord Ossulston, the care of his education was left to a governor, who neglected it. Finding himself deficient in many parts of literature, he resolved to devote a certain number of hours every day to his studies; and thereby improved himself to a high degree of learning. He entered a volunteer in the second Dutch war; and was in that famous naval engagement where the duke of York commanded as admiral; on which occasion he behaved so gallantly that he was appointed commander of the Royal Catherine. He afterwards made a campaign in the French service under M. de Turenne. As Tangier was in danger of being taken by the Moors, he offered to head the forces which were then sent to defend it; and accordingly was appointed to command them. He was then earl of Mulgrave, and one of the lords of the bed-chamber to king Charles II. The Moors retired on the approach of the king's forces; and the result was the blowing up of Tangier. He continued in several great posts during the reign of king James II., till that unfortunate prince was dethroned. Lord Mulgrave, though he paid his respects to king William before he was advanced to the throne, yet did not accept of any post in the government till some years after. In the sixth year of William and Mary he was created marquis of Normanby. He was one of the most active and zealous opposers of the bill which took away Sir John Fenwick's life; and exerted the utmost vigor in carrying through the treason bill, and the bill for triennial parliaments. He had some considerable posts under king William, and enjoyed much of his favor and confidence. In 1702 he was sworn lord privy seal; and in the same year was appointed one of the commissioners to treat of an union between England and Scotland. In 1703 he was created duke of Normanby, and soon after duke of Buckingham. In 1711 he was made steward of the household to queen Anne, and president of the council. During her reign he was but once out of employment; when he resigned, being attached to Tory principles. He was instrumental in the change of the ministry in 1710. A circumstance that reflects the highest honor on him is the vigor with which he acted in favor of the unhappy Catalans, who afterwards were so inhumanly sacrificed. He was survived by only one legitimate son (who died at Rome in 1735); but left several natural children. His worst enemies allow that he lived on very good terms with his last wife, natural daughter to king James II., the late duchess of Buckingham, a lady who always behaved with a dignity suitable to the daughter of a king. He died in 1721. He was admired by the poets of his age; by Dryden, Prior, and Garth. His Essay on Poetry was applauded by Addison, and his Rehearsal is still universally admired, as a piece of true and original satire. His writings were splendidly printed in 1723, in 2 vols. 4to; and have since been re-printed in 1729, in 2 vols. 8vo. The first contains his poems on various subjects; the second his prose works, which consist of historical memoirs, speeches in parliament, characters, dialogues, critical observations, essays, and letters. The edition of 1729 is castrated; some particulars relating to the Revolution in that of 1723 having given offence. SHEFFIELD, a market-town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, at the junction of the rivers Don and Sheaf, thirty-six miles south of Leeds, and 162 N. N. W. of London, celebrated throughout Europe for all kinds of hardware, cutlery, and plated goods. It has a singular appearance, from its occupying a long hill, and extending over the adjoining valleys, being almost enveloped in the smoke from its numerous fire-engines, foundries, &c. The three churches, St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and St. James's, erected on a hill, have a fine effect; their spires overtop the whole town, and look still more majestic at a small distance, by the intervening atmosphere being almost continually loaded with sooty exhalations. The extent, of the town each way is about three-quarters of a mile. The streets are in general wide, well-built, open, clean, and lighted by gas. The slaughter-houses are built close to the river. Over each of the rivers is a good stone bridge; that over the Don, called the Lady's Bridge, consists of three arches, and was widened and repaired in 1768. That over the Sheaf consists of one arch, erected in 1769. On the eastern side of the Sheaf stands the duke of Norfolk's hospital, erected in 1670, consisting of two quadrangles of eighteen chambers in each, for eighteen poor men, and eighteen poor women. It has a neat chapel. Here is another hospital, erected in 1703, for the benefit of sixteen poor cutlers' widows; and a good free grammar and charity schools. Here are nine different meeting-houses for dissenters, and a Roman Catholic chapel. Between the rivers Don and Sheaf, in the north-eastern part of the town, anciently stood a castle of a triangular form; this castle surrendered to the parliament forces in 1644, and was demolished. The market-place, which is exten sive and commodious, was erected by the duke of Norfolk, who is nearly the sole proprietor of the town. Here is a neat theatre, and assembly room. In the south-east corner of Trinity churchyard is the old town-hall; a new town-house has lately been erected, handsomely built with stone. Here are also a general infirmary, commodious military barracks, and two excellent schools on the Bell and Lancasterian system. From the convenience of the rivers and adjoining coal mines, the whole of the heavy work has of late years been performed by machinery, and its workmen have made such improvements in their trade that they are now able to undersell every other market. The nature of their manufactures gives the town a very sombre appearance, and the houses all look black from the continual smoke. A canal has been cut to the verge of the town, which, with the navigation of the Don, conveys the manufactures of Sheffield to all parts of the kingdom. On the south side of Trinity church-yard is the cutlers' hall, erected in 1725. The corporation of cutlers are styled The Company of Cutlers of Hallamshire,' and is governed by a master, two wardens, and two assistants; but the public affairs of the town are under seven of the principal inhabitants, who are termed regents or collectors. The town is well supplied with water, by means of pipes, and at a moderate rate. Here are two banking-houses Markets Tuesday and Saturday. Fairs Tuesday after Whitsun week, and November 28th. The old church of the Holy Trinity, a fine ancient Gothic structure, is a vicarage. The new churches are curacies. Patron, the vicar. SHEFFIELDIA, in botany; a genus of plants belonging to the class of pentandria, and to the order of monogynia. The corolla is bell-shaped; the filaments are ten, of which every second is barren. The capsule consists of one cell, which has four valves. There is only one species, viz. S. repens. SHEIK, in the oriental customs, the person who has the care of the mosques in Egypt; his duty is the same as that of the imams at Constantinople. There are more or fewer of these to every mosque, according to its size or revenue. One of these is head over the rest, and answers to a parish priest with us; and has under him, in large mosques, the readers, and people who cry out to go to prayers; but in small mosques the sheik is obliged to do all this himself. In such it is their business to open the mosque, to cry to prayers, and to begin their short devotions at the head of the congregation, who stand rank and file in great order, and make all their motions together. Every Friday the sheik makes an harangue to his congregation. SHEIK-BELLET, an officer in the oriental nations. In Egypt the sheik-bellet is the head of the city, and is appointed by the pacha. The business of this officer is to take care that no innovations be made which may be prejudicial to the Porte, and that they send no orders which may hurt the liberties of the people. But all his authority depends on his credit and interest, not his office for the government of Egypt is of such a kind that often the people of the least power by their posts have the greatest influence; and a caia of the Janizaries or Arabs, and sometimes one of their meanest officers, an oda basha, finds means, by his parts and abilities, to govern all things. SHEK'EL, n. s. Heb. p. An ancient Jewish coin equal to four Attic drachms, or four Roman denarii, value about 2s. 6d. sterling. printed upon their sheckle on one side the golden pot The Jews, albeit they detested images, yet imwhich had the manna, and on the other Aaron's rod. Camden. Cooley. The huge iron head six hundred shekels weighed, And of whole bodies but one wound it made: Able death's worse command to overdoe, Destroying life at once and carcase too. brass. This coat of mail weighed five thousand shekels of Broome. SHEKOABAD, a considerable town of Hindostan in the province of Agra. It was formerly fortified. The vicinity produces very fine indigo, in which, and cotton, it carries on a good trade. This town is said to have been founded by the unfortunate Dara Sheko, the elder brother of Aurungzebe. Long. 78° 38′ E., lat. 27° 6' N. SHELBY, a county of the United States, in Kentucky, bounded north by Henry, west by Bullet, east by Franklin, and south by Nelson. which run into Salt River. It is fertile, and copiously watered by the creeks Shelby county, Kentucky, situated on Brashan's SHELBYVILLE, the principal town of Creek, twelve miles above its junction with Salt River. SHELDON (Gilbert), archbishop of Canterbury, an eminent and munificent English prelate, born in 1598. He was entered of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1613, and in 1622 was elected fellow of All Souls, and became chaplain to lord Coventry, keeper of the great seal, who made him a prebendary of Gloucester, and recommended him to king Charles I. The king made him vicar of Hackney, and rector of Ickford and NewingIn 1635 he was chosen warden of All ton. Souls. During the civil wars, he continued attached to the king, and attended as one of his commissioners at the treaty of Uxbridge, where he argued warmly for the king and the church. Hence he was afterwards imprisoned by the parliament for six months, and deprived of his wardenship and lodgings. He was liberated by the reforming committee, October 24th, 1648, on condition that he should not come within five miles of Oxford. On the Restoration he was replaced in his wardenship, made master of the Savoy, dean of the chapel royal, and bishop of London; and in 1663 archbishop of Canterbury. In 1C67 he was chosen chancellor of the University of Oxford, but lost king Charles II.'s favor by honestly advising him to dismiss his mistress, Barbara Villiers. He died November 9th, 1677, aged eighty. He spent no less than £60,000 in public and private charities. SHELF, n. s. Sax. rcyle; Belg. scelf. A SHELFY, adj. board fixed to lay any thing on; a sand-bank or rock in the sea. About his shelves SHELL, n. s., v. a., &` Saxon reyll, rceall; SHELL DUCK, [v. n. Belg. schelle. The SHELLFISH, crustaceous covering SHELLY, adj. of certain animals and vegetables; covering of an egg; the outer part of any thing; hence a musical instrument (in poetic language); a superficial part: to shell is, to take out of a shell; to fall off as broken shells; to cast the shell: a shell-duck is a kind of wild duck: shell-fish, fish protected by shells: shelly, abounding in, or consisting of, shells. Think him as a serpent's egg, Which hatched would, as his kind, grow mis chievous, And kill him in the shell. Shakspeare. Julius Cæsar. The spoils of nations in an ear; Albion Donne. Ben Jonson's Catiline. through the shell, and reached the waters, it rarefied them. Burnet's Theory. So devout are the Romanists about this outward shell of religion, that if an altar be moved, or a stone of it broken, it ought to be re-consecrated. Ayliffe's Parergon. The marquis of Medina Sidonia made the shell of a house, that would have been a very noble building, had he brought it to perfection. Addison on Italy. The ocean rolling, and the shelly shore, Beautiful objects, shall delight no more. Prior. The shells served as moulds to this sand, which, when consolidated, and afterwards freed from its investient shell, is of the same shape as the cavity of the shell. Woodward. The shells, being found, were so like those they saw upon their shores, that they never questioned but that they were the exuviæ of shellfish, and once belonged to the sea. Id. Some fruits are contained within a hard shell, being the seeds of the plants. Arbuthnot. The ulcers were cured, and the scabs shelled off.j Wiseman. The conceit of Anaximander was, that the first men, and all animals, were bred in some warm moisture, inclosed in crustaceous skins, as lobsters; and so continued, till their shelly prisons_growing dry, and breaking, maae way for them, Bentley. He whom ungrateful Athens could expel, At all times just but when he signed the shell. Pope. SHELLS, in natural history, are hard crustaceous, or bony coverings, with which certain animals are defended, and thence called shell fish. See PHYSIOLOGY and CONCHOLOGY. M. Herissant, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, 1766, suggested that the structure of shells was organical. In the numerous experiments that he made on an immense number, and a very great variety, of animal shells, he constantly found that they were composed of two distinct substances; one of which is a cretaceous or earthy matter; and the other appeared from many experiments made upon it by burning, distillation, and otherwise, to be evidently of an animal nature. These two substances he dexterously separated from each other by a very easy chemical analysis; by the gentle operation of which they were exhibited distinctly to view, without any material alteration from the action of the solvent, or instrument employed for that purpose. On an entire shell, or a fragment of one contained in a glass vessel, he poured a sufficient quantity of the nitrous acid, considerably diluted either with water or spirit of wine. After the liquor has dissolved all the earthy part of the shell (which may be collected after precipitation by a fixed or volatile alkali), there remains floating in it a soft substance, consisting of innumerable membranes of a retiform appearance, and disposed in different shells, in a variety of positions, which constitutes the animal the solvent, retains the exact figure of the shell; part of it. This, as it has not been affected by and, on being viewed through a microscope, exhibits satisfactory proofs of a vascular and organical structure. He shows that this membra nous substance is an appendix to the body of the animal, or a continuation of the tendinous fibres that compose the ligaments by which it is fixed to its shell; and that this last owes its hardness to the earthy particles conveyed through the vessels of the animal, which fix themselves into, and incrust, as it were, the meshes formed by the reticular filaments of which this membranous substance is composed. In the shell called porcelaine, in particular, the delicacy of these membranes was so great, that he was obliged to put it into spirit of wine, to which he had the patience to add a single drop of spirit of nitre day by day, for the space of two months; lest the air generated, or let loose by the action of the acid on the earthy substance, should tear the compages of its fine membranous structure into shatters; as it certainly would have done in a more hasty and less gentle dissolution. The delicate reticulated film left after this operation had all the tenuity of a spider's web; and accordingly he does not attempt to delineate its organisation. In other shells he employed even five or six months in demonstrating the complicated membranous structure of this animal substance by this kind of chemical anatomy. In general, however, the process does not require much time. The singular regularity, beauty, and delicacy in the structure of the shells of animals, and the variety and brilliancy in the coloring of many of them, at the same time that they strike the attention of the most incurious observers, have at all times excited philosophers to enquire into and detect, if possible, the causes and manner of their formation. But the attempts of naturalists, ancient and modern, to discover this process, have constantly proved unsuccessful. M. de Reaumur hitherto appears alone to have given a plausible account, at least, of the formation of the shell of the garden-snail in particular, founded on a course of very ingenious experiments, related in the Mem. de l'Acad. 1709. He then endeavours to show that this substance is produced merely by the perspirable matter of the animal condensing and afterwards hardening on its surface, and accordingly taking the figure of its body, which has performed the office of a mould to it; in short, that the shell of a snail, and, as he supposed, of all other animals possessed of shells, was only the product of a viscous transudation from the body of the animal, containing earthy particles united by mere juxtaposition. This hypothesis, how ever, is liable to very great and insurmountable difficulties, if we apply it to the formation of some of the most common shells: for how, according to this system, it may he asked, can the oyster, for instance, considered simply as a mould, form to itself a covering so much exceeding its own body in dimensions? On this subject Dr. Thomson has the following remarks in his System of Chemistry, vol. iv. p. 366-368. The crustaceous coverings of animals, as of echini, crabs, lobsters, prawns, and craw-fish, and also the shells of eggs, are composed of the same ingredients as bones (see BONES); but in them the proportion of carbonate of lime far exceeds that of phosphate. Thus 100 parts of lobster crust contain sixty carbonate of lime, fourteen phosphate, and twenty-six cartilage; 100 parts of crawfish crust contain sixty carbonate of lime, twelve phosphate of lime, and twenty-eight cartilage; 100 parts of hen's egg shells contain 89.6 carbonate of lime, 5.7 phosphate of lime, and 4-7 animal matter. Hatchett found traces of phosphate of lime also in the shells of snails. The shells of sea animals may be divided into two classes. The first has the appearance of porcelain, their surface is enamelled, and their texture is often slightly fibrous. Mr. Hatchett has given them the name of porcellaneous shells. The second kind of shells is known by the name of mother-ofpearl. It is covered with a strong epidermis, and below it lies the shelly matter in layers. The shell of the fresh water mussel, mother-of-pearl, heliotis iris, and turbo olearius, are instances of these shells.' Of the many singular configurations and appearances of the membranous part of different shells, which are described in M. Herissant's memoir, and are delineated in several well executed plates, we shall mention only, as a specimen, the curious membranous structure observed in the lamina of mother-of-pearl, and other shells of the same kind, after having been exposed to the operation of the author's solvent. Beside the great variety of fixed colors, with which he found the animal filaments of these shells adorned, the shell presents a succession of rich and changeable colors, the production of which he explains from the configurations of their membranes. These brilliant decorations are produced at a very small expense. The membranous substance is plaited and rampled in such a manner that its exterior laminæ, incrusted with their earthy and semi-transparent matter, form an infinite number of little prisms, placed in all kinds of directions, which refract the rays of light, and produce all the changes of color observable in these shells. With respect to the figures and colors of shells, river shells have not so agreeable or diversified a color as the land and sea shells; but the variety in the figure, colors, and other characters of sea shells, is almost infinite. The number of distinct species in the cabinets of the curious is very great; and doubtless the deep bottoms of the sea, and the shores yet unexplored, contain multitudes still unknown to us. It is rare to find any two shells exactly alike in all respects. This wonderful variety, however, is not all the produce of one sea or one country. Bonani observes that the beautiful shells come from the East Indies and from the Red Sea. The sun, by the great heat that it gives to the countries near the line, exalts the colors of the shells produced there, and gives them a lustre and brilliancy that those of colder climates generally want. Of fossil shells, or those buried at great depths in the earth, some are found remaining almost entirely in their native state, but others are variously altered by being impregnated with particles of stone and of other fossils; in the place of others there is found mere stone or spar, or some other native mineral body, expressing all their lineaments in the most exact manner, as having been formed wholly from them, the shell having been first deposited in some solid matrix, and thence dissolved by very slow degrees, and |