it is poison to them. Rabbits are subject to two diseases; 1st, the rot, which is caused by too large a quantity of greens, or from giving them fresh gathered and wet with dew or rain. The greens therefore are always to be given dry; and a sufficient quantity of dry food mixed with them: the best food is the shortest and sweetest hay that can be got, of which one load will serve 200 couples a year; and, out of this stock of 200, 200 may be eaten in the family, 200 sold, and a sufficient number kept for breeding. The other discase is a sort of madness: this may be known by their wallowing and tumbling about with their heels upwards, and hopping in any odd manner into their boxes. This distemper is supposed to be owing to the rankness of their feeding; and the general cure is the keeping them low, and giving them the prickly herb called tare-thistle to eat. The general computation of males and females is, that one buck rabbit will serve for nine does; some allow ten to one buck. The wild rabbits are either to be taken by small cur dogs, or by spaniels bred up to the sport; and the places of hunting those who straggle from their burrows is under close hedges or bushes, or among corn fields and fresh pastures. The owners use to course them with small greyhounds. The common method is by nets called purse nets, and ferrets. The ferret is sent into the hole to fetch them out; but the purse net, being spread over the hole, takes them as they come out. The ferret's mouth must be muffled, and then the rabbit gets no harm. A hay net or two may also be put up at a small distance from the burrows that are to be hunted; thus very few will escape. Some who have not ferrets smoke the rabbits out of their holes with burning brimstone and orpiment; but this is very detrimental to the place, as no rabbit will for a long time afterwards come near it. See WARREN.

RAB'BLE, n. s. Į Lat. rabula; barb. Lat. RAB'BLEMENT. rabulari; French racaille; Belg. rapalje, rabbelan. A tumultuous crowd; an assembly of low people; both nouns are thus applied.

A rude rabblement, Whose like he never saw, he durst not bide, But got his ready steed, and fast away 'gan ride, Spenser. Countrymen will ye relent and yield to mercy, Or let a rubble lead ye to your deaths? Shakspeare. Go bring the rabble here to this place. Id. The rabblement hooted, clapped their chopt hands, and uttered a deal of stinking breath.

Id.

Of these his several ravishments, betrayings, and stealing away of men's wives, came in all those ancient fables, and all that rabble of Grecian forgeries. Raleigh.

There will be always tyrants, murderers, thieves, traitors, and other of the same rabblement. Camden.

There is a rabble amongst the gentry, as well as the commonalty, a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men. Sir T. Browne.

The better sort abhors scurrility, And often censures what the rabble like. Roscommon. That profane, atheistical, epicurean rabble, whom the whole nation so rings of, are not the wisest men in the world. South.

To gratify the barbarous audience, I gave them a short rabble scene, because the mob are represented by

RABELAIS (Francis), a French writer of the sixteenth century, was born at Chinon, in Tou

raine about 1483. He was first a Franciscan

friar, but quitting his religious habit studied physic at Montpelier, where he took his degree of M. D. Some time after he came to Rome as physician in ordinary to cardinal John du Bellay, archbishop of Paris. On a second journey to Rome, he obtained, in 1536, a brief to qualify him for holding ecclesiastical benefices; and, by the interest of cardinal Du Bellay, was received as a canon in the abbey of St. Maur, near Paris. His knowledge in physic rendered him doubly useful; but, as he was a man of wit and humor, many ridiculous things are reported of him. He published several works; but his chief performance is a strange incoherent romance, called the History of Gargantua and Pantagruel, a satire. He died about 1553.

RAB'ID, adj. Lat. rabidus. Fierce; furious; mad.

A woman had her coat torn by a mad dog, which she a considerable time after sewed up, and bit off the thread with her teeth, and some time after died rabid from biting off that thread. (Hildanus Obs. Chir.) Also a man only kissing his children to take his leave of them when he had the rabies upon him, they all soon after died rabid.

Diseases of Barbadoes, p. 249.

RABIRIUS (Caius), a Roman knight, who lent an immense sum of money to Ptolemy Auletes, king of Egypt. The monarch afterwards not only refused to repay him, but confined him, and endangered his life. Rabirius escaped from Egypt with difficulty; but, on his return to Rome, he was accused by the senate of having lent money to an African prince for unlawful purposes. He was ably defended by Cicero, and acquitted with difficulty.

RABIRIUS, a Roman poet in the age of Augustus. He wrote a poem on the victory over Antony at Actium. Seneca has compared him to Virgil for elegance and majesty; but Quintilian does not speak so favorably of him.

RABIRIUS, an architect in the reign of Domitian. He built a celebrated palace for the emperor, of which the ruins are still seen at Rome.

RABNABAD, a low island in the bay of Bengal, formed by the debris of the river Ganges, and separated from the mainland by a narrow strait. It is fifteen miles in length, by five in breadth, and is covered with long grass and underwood, the habitation of deer and tigers. It is nearly inundated during the spring tides; and is not inhabited. Long. 90° 26' E., lat. 22° N.

RACE, n.s. Fr. race; Span. raça; Ital. razza, of Lat. radir, a root. A family; course of generations; particular breed: also used for a taste of the root; hence a strong taste or flavor. See the extract from Temple, and RACY.

A race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds.

Shakspeare. Merchant of Venice.

If they are all debased and willing slaves, The young but breathing to grow grey in bondage, And the old sinking to ignoble graves, Of such a race no matter who is king.

Murphy. RACE, n. s. & v. n. Sax. nær; Goth. Swed. RACE-HORSE, and Isl. ras, of rans, renRA'CER. na, to run.-Thomson. Contest in running; match between running animals; course on the feet; progress; train: to run in a race: a race-horse or racer is a horse thus used: the latter is also applied to any ani

mal that runs a race.

It suddenly fell from an excess of favour, which many examples have taught them never stopt his race till it came to a headlong overthrow. Sidney. The flight of many birds is swifter than the race of many beasts.

Bacon.

An offensive war is made, which is unjust in the aggressor; the prosecution and race of the war carrieth the defendant to invade the ancient patrimony of the first aggressor, who is now turned defendant; shall he sit down, and not put himself in defence? The race of this war fell upon the loss of Urbin,

which he reobtained.

To describe races and games
Of tilting furniture.

My race of glory run, and race of shame.
The great light of day yet wants to run
Much of his race though steep.

Id.

Id.

Milton.

ld.

Id.

The reason Hudibras gives, why those who can talk on trifles speak with the greatest fluency, is, that the tongue is like a race-horse, which runs the faster the less weight it carries. Addison.

Stand forth ye champions, who the gauntlet wield, Or you, the swiftest racers of the field; Stand forth, ye wrestlers, who these pastimes grace, I wield the gauntlet, and I run the race.

Pope.

A poet's forta she placed before their eyes, And bad the nimblest racer seize the prize. Id. He safe returned, the race of glory past, New to his friends' embrace. Id. Odyssey. For every horse, mare, or gelding, bonâ fide, kept for the purpose of racing or running for any plate, prize, or sum of money, or other thing, or kept in training for any of the said purposes, whether in the stables of the proprietor or proprietors, or of any other person or persons, the sum of 21. 88.

45 Geo. III. c. 13.

A poet hurts himself by writing prose, as a racehorse hurts his motions by condescending to draw in

RACE, in general, signifies running with others in order to obtain a prize, either on foot, or on horseback, in chariots, &c. The race was one of the exercises among the ancient Grecian games, which was performed in a course containing 125 paces; and those who contended in these foot races were frequently clothed in armour. Chariot and horse races also made a part of these ancient games. Races were known in England in very early times. Fitz-Stephen, who wrote in the days of Henry II., mentions the great delight that the citizens of London took in the diversion, from a generous emulation of showing superior been in vogue in the reign of queen Elizabeth, skill in horsemanship. Races appear to have and to have been carried to such excess as to injure the fortunes of the nobility, though it is probable that the parsimonious queen did not approve of it. In king James's reign places were allotted for the sport: Croydon in the south, and Garterly in Yorkshire, were celebrated courses. Camden also says, that in 1607 there were races near York, and the prize was a little golden bell.

RACE-HORSES. In preparing the race-horse for running, it is first necessary to examine whether he be low or high in flesh; and whether he be dull and heavy, or brisk and lively abroad. If he appear dull and heavy, and there is reason to suppose it is owing to too hard riding, or, as the jockeys express it, to some grease that has been dissolved in hunting, and has not been removed by scouring, then the proper remedy is half an ounce of diapente given in a pint of good sack; this will at once remove the cause, and revive the animal's spirits. After this, for the first week, he is fed with oats, bread, and split beans; giving him sometimes the one, and sometimes the other as he likes best; and always leaving some in the locker, that he may feed at leisure when left alone. When the groom returns at the feeding time, whatever is left of this must be removed and fresh given; thus he will soon become high spirited, wanton, and playful. Every day he must be rode out an airing, and every other day it will be proper to give him a little more exercise; but not so much as to make him sweat much. The beans and oats in this case are to be put into a bag, and beaten till the hulls are all off, and then winnowed clean; and the bread is

to have the crust clean cut off. If the horse be in good flesh and spirits when taken up for its month's preparation, the diapente must be omitted; and the chief business will be to give him good food, and so much exercise as will keep him in wind, without oversweating him or exhausting his spirit. When he takes large exercises afterwards, towards the end of the month, it will be proper to have some horses in the place mettle, and the beating them will give him spito run against him. This will put him upon his rits. This, however, is to be cautiously observed, that he has not a bloody heat given him for ten days or a fortnight before the plate is to be run for; and that the last heat that is given him the day before the race, must be in his clothes: this

will make him run with much more vigor when stripped for the race, and feeling the cold wind on every part. In the second week he should have the same food, and more exercise. In the last fortnight he must have dried oats, that have been hulled by beating. After this they are to be wetted in a quantity of whites of eggs, beaten up, and then laid out in the sun to dry; and when dry, as before, the horse is to have them. This sort of food is very light of digestion, and very good for his wind. The beans this time should be given more sparingly, and the bread should be made of three parts wheat and one part beans. If he should become costive under this course, he must then have some ale and whites of eggs beaten together; this will cool him, and keep his body moist. In the last week the mash is to be omitted, and barley water given him in its place: every day, till the day before the race, he should have his fill of hay; then he must have it given him more sparingly, that he may have time to digest it; and in the morning of the race-day he must have a toast or two of white bread soaked in sack, and the same just before he is let out to the field. This is an excellent method, because the two extremes of fulness and fasting are at this time to be equally avoided; the one hurting his wind, and the other occasioning faintness. After he has had his food, the litter is to be shaken up, and the stable kept quiet, that he may be disturbed by nothing till he is taken out to run.

The amusement of horse-racing gradually obtained its present celebrity. In 1599 private matches between gentlemen, who were their own jockeys and riders, were very common; and, in the reign of James I., public races were established at various places, when the discipline and mode of preparing the horses for running, &c., were much the same as now. The most celebrated races of that time were called bell courses, the prize of the conqueror being a bell: hence, perhaps, the phrase of bearing the bell, applied to excellence. In the end of Charles I.'s reign, races were performed in Hyde Park. Newmar ket was also a place for the same purpose, though it was first used for hunting. Racing was revived soon after the Restoration, and much encouraged by Charles II., who appointed races for his own amusement at Datchet Mead, when he resided at Windsor. Newmarket, however, became the principal place. The king attended in person, established a house for his own accommodation, and entered horses in his own name. Instead of bells, he gave a silver bowl or cup, value 100 guineas; on which prize the exploits and pedigree of the successful horse were generally engraved. William III. added to the plates, and founded an academy for riding: and queen Anne continued the bounty, adding several plates herself. George I., towards the end of his reign, discontinued the plates, and gave in their room 100 guineas. An act was passed in the 13th of George II. for suppressing races by ponies and other small and weak horses, &c., by which all matches for any prize under the value of £50 are prohibited, under a penalty of £200 to be paid by the owner of each horse running, and £100 by such as advertise the plate; and by

which each horse entered to run, if five years old, is obliged to carry ten stone; if six, eleven; and if seven, twelve. It was also ordained that no person shall run any horse at a course, unless it be his own, nor enter more than one horse for the same plate, upon pain of forfeiting the horses; and also every horse-race must be begun and ended in the same day. Horses may run for the value of £50 with any weight, and at any place: 13 Geo. II. cap. 19; 18 Geo. II. cap. 34. Berenger's History and Art of Horsemanship. A plaintiff shall not be allowed to recover a wager on such a horse-race as is illegal within the statute. 4 Term. Rep. 1. A match for £25 a side is a match for £50. RACEMATION, n. s. Lat. racemus. Cluster, like that of grapes.

A cock will in one day fertilitate the whole racemation or cluster of eggs, which are not excluded in many weeks after.

Browne.

RACHORE, a district of Hindostan in the province of Bejapore. It is bounded on the north by the Kistnah, and on the south by the Tung. budra, and is extremely fertile. Its chief towns are Rachore and Anamsagur.

RACINE (John), of the French academy, treasurer of Moulins, and secretary to Louis XIV., was born at Ferre-Milon in 1639. He produced his Thebaide when very young; and afterwards other pieces, which met with great success, though they appeared when Corneille was in his highest reputation. In his career, however, he did not fail to meet with opposition from envy and cabal. Owing to chagrin from this circumstance, and partly, it is said, from religious motives, he resolved to quit the theatre for ever, in his thirtyeighth year; he even formed a design of becoming a Carthusian friar, but at last married the daughter of the treasurer of Amiens, by whom he had seven children. He had been admitted a member of the French academy in 1673, and in 1677 he was nominated with Boileau, with whom he was ever in strict friendship, to write the history of Louis XIV. Boileau and Racine, after having for some time labored at this work, perceived that history was not their fort, and Racine spent the latter years of his life in composing an account of the house of Port-royal, the place of his education; which, though well drawn up, has not been published. Having drawn up a memorial upon the miseries of the people, and the means of relieving them, he one day lent it to madame de Maintenon, when the king, coming in, commended the zeal of Racine, but disapproved of his meddling with things that did not concern him. The king's displeasure is said to have so mortified the poet that it brought on a fever, of which he died the 22d of April, 1699. The king sent often to him in his illness; and after his death settled a handsome pension upon his family.-There is nothing in the French language written with more wit and elegance than his pieces in prose; and, besides his plays, several of his letters have been published. Racine's works were printed at Amsterdam in 1722, in 2 vols. 12mo., and a pompous edition was printed in 2 vois. 4to., in 1723.

RA'CINESS, n. s. of being racy.

From racy. The quality

RACK, n.s., v. a. & v. n. Belg. rakke, from RACK-RENT, n. s. rekken, to extend, RACK-RENTER. draw out, stretch; Goth. reckia. An engine of torture by stretching the limbs; any instrument of extension; a trail of clouds as driven by the wind: Shakspeare uses it for wreck: torment; torture: to rack is to stream or extend out as clouds before the wind; to torment by the rack; torment in any way; screw; force; extend; defecate or draw off from the lees: rack-rent is rent stretched to the utmost: rack-renter, he who pays it.

The landlords there shamefully rack their tenants, exacting of them, besides his covenants, what he pleaseth. Spenser. They, racking and stretching Scripture further than by God was meant, are drawn into sundry in

conveniences.

Hooker.

Vex not his ghost; O let him pass! he hates him That would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch him out longer. Shakspeare. King Lear. The great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherits, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant, faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
Id. Tempest.

We often see against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death.
Id. Hamlet.
Three giorious suns, each one a perfect sun,
Not separated with the racking clouds,
But severed in a pale clear-shining sky.

Shakspeare.

Did ever any man upon the rack afflict himself, because he had received a cross answer from his misTaylor.

tress?

These bows, being somewhat like the long bows in use amongst us, were bent only by a man's immediate strength, without the help of any bender or rack that are used to others. Wilkins.

A fit of the stone puts a king to the rack, and makes him as miserable as it does the meanest subject. Temple.

The sisters turn the wheel,
Empty the woolly rack, and fill the reel.
Dryden.

As wintery winds contending in the sky,
With equal force of lungs their titles try;
They rage, they roar: the doubtful rack of heaven
Stands without motion, and the tide undriven. Id.
Let them feel the whip, the sword, the fire,
And in the tortures of the rack expire.

Id.

He took possession of his just estate,
Nor racked his tenants with increase of rent. Id.
Hold, O dreadful sir,

You would not rack an innocent old man.
Id. and Lee.

Unhappy most like tortured me,
Their joints new set to be new racked again.

Cowley. The' apostate angel, though in pain, Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair.

Milton.

It was worth the while for the adversary to rack invention, and to call in all the succours of learning and critical skill to assail them, if possible, and to wrest them out of our hands. Have poor families been ruined by rack-rents, paid for the lands of the church?

Waterland.

Swift's Miscellanies. RACK, n. s. Sax. pracca pric; Goth. rygg, the back-bone; Gr. paxis (see RIDGE). Hence formerly a neck of mutton cut for the table; and (probably from its similarity of shape) the grate in which hay is placed for cattle, or on which bacon is dried: others derive this last word from Belg. ruk; Swed. racke, range. See RANGE. Their bulls they send to pastures far, Or hill, or feed them at full racks within. May's Virgil. The best way to feed cattle with it is to put it in racks, because of the great quantity they tread down. Mortimer.

He bid the nimble hours
Bring forth the steeds; the nimble hours obey:
From their full racks the generous steeds retire.
Addison.

The RACK is an instrument of torture, furnished with pulleys, cords, &c., for extorting confession from criminals. The trial by rack is utterly unknown to the law of England; though once, when the dukes of Exeter and Suffolk, and other ministers of Henry VI. had laid a design to introduce the civil law into this kingdom as the rule of government; for a beginning they erected a rack for torture, which was called in derision the duke of Exeter's daughter, and still remains in the tower of London, where it was occasionally used as an engine of the state not of the law, more than once in the reign of queen Elizabeth. But when, upon the assassination of Villiers, duke of Buckingham, by Felton, it was proposed in the privy council to put the assassin to the rack, to discover his accomplices; the judges, being consulted, however, declared unanimously, to their own honor and that of the law, that no such proceeding was allowable by the laws of England. The marquis Beccaria (chap. 16) has proposed this problem, with a gravity and precision truly mathematical: The force of the muscles, and the sensibility of the nerves of an innocent person being given, it is required to find the degree of pain necessary to make him confess himself guilty of a given crime?'

RACK, a spirituous liquor made by the Tartars of Tongusia. This kind of rack is made of mare's milk, which is left to be sour, and afterwards distilled twice or thrice between two earthen pots closely stopped; whence the liquor runs through a small wooden pipe.

RACK (Edmund), a celebrated writer on agriculture, was born.in Norfolk, and a Quaker. He

The cyder at first is very luscious, but, if ground more early, it is more racy. Mortimer's Husbandry. The hospitable sage, in sign

wrote many essays, poems, and letters, and some controversial tracts. He settled, about his fortieth year, at Bath in 1775, and was soon introduced to the most eminent literati of that place, among whom Dr. Wilson and Mrs. Macauley highly esteemed him for his integrity and abililities. In 1777 he published Mentor's Letters, a work which has run through many editions; and laid the plan of an agricultural society, which was soon adopted by four counties. He still further advanced his fame by his papers in the Farmer's Magazine, and his communications to the Bath Society's papers. His last engagement was in the History of Somersetshire, where he wrote the topographical parochial surveys. This work, in 3 vols. 4to., was published in 1791, by his colleague the Rev. Mr. Collinson. Mr. Rack died of an asthma in February 1787, aged fifty-two.

RACKET, n. s. Fr. raquetta; Teut. racket; Ital. racchetta. The instrument with which a ball is struck at tennis: the noise of a racketcourt; hence any loud irregular noise.

I

That the tennis-court keeper knows better than it is a low ebb of linen with thee, when thou keepest

not racket there.

Shakspeare.

When we have matcht our rackets to these balls, We will in France play a set, Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard. Id.

The body into which impression is made, either can yield backward or it cannot: if it can yield backward, then the impression made is a motion; as we see a stroke with a racket upon a ball makes it fly from it.

Digby on the Soul.

He talks much of the motives to do and forbear, how they determine a reasonable man, as if he were no more than a tennis-ball, to be tossed to and fro by the rackets of the second causes.

Bramhall against Hobbes. Ambition hath removed her lodging, and lives the next door to faction, where they keep such a rucket that the whole parish is disturbed and every night in Swift.

an uproar.

RAC'KOON, n. s. Or racoon. A species of

URSUS, which see.

The racoon is a New England animal, like a badger, having a tail like a fox, being cloathed with a thick and deep fur: it sleeps in the day time in a hollow tree, and goes out a-nights, when the moon shines, to feed on the sea side, where it is hunted by dogs. Bailey.

RACONIGI, or RACONIS, a town of Piedmont, Italy, in the province of Saluzzo, on the river Grana, near its junction with the Maira. It is surrounded with a wall, and contains several good churches, but its chief ornament is a magnificent castle and park belonging to the prince of Carignano. Population 10,500, employed for the most part in the manufacture of silk. Ten miles south of Carignano, and twenty

south of Turin.

In

Late from the mellowing cask restored to light, Of social welcome, mixed the racy wine, By ten long years refined, and rosy bright. Pope. RADCLIFFE (Dr. John), an eminent English physician, born at Wakefield in Yorkshire in He was educated at Oxford, but recom1650. mended himself more by his ready wit and vivacity than by his acquisitions in learning. He began to practise at Oxford in 1675; but never paid any regard to established rules, which he censured with great acrimony; and, as this drew all the old practitioners upon him, he lived in a continual state of hostility with them. Yet his reputation increased so much that, before he had been two years in business, his practice was very extensive among persons of high rank. 1684 he removed to London, and settled in Bow Street, Covent Garden, where in less than a year he had the first practice. In 1687 the princess Anne of Denmark made him her physician; yet, when she and her husband joined the prince of ing them, on pretence of the multitude of his Orange, Radcliffe excused himself from attendpatients. Nevertheless he was often sent for to king William, and incurred censure for his treatment of queen Mary, who died of the small-pox; and soon after lost his place about the princess Anne by his attachment to the bottle. He also totally lost the favor of king William by his uncourtly freedom. In 1699, when the king showed him his swollen ancles, while the rest of his body was emaciated, and asked him what he thought of them! Why truly I would not have your majesty's two legs for your three kingdoms,' replied Radcliffe. He continued increasing in business and

insolence as long as he lived, and was continually at war with his brethren the physicians; who considered him in no other light than that of an active ingenious empiric. He died in 1714; and, if he never attempted to write any thing himself, has perpetuated his memory by founding a fine library at Oxford.

RADCLIFFE (Ann), a modern female novelist, born in London, July 9th, 1764. Her father's name was Ward, and at the age of twenty-three she married William Radcliffe, esq., a student at law, which profession, however, he never followed, but became proprietor of the English Chronicle. Mrs. Radcliffe's first performance was a romance, entitled the Castles of Athlen and Dumblaine, and the next the Sicilian Romance; but the first of her works which attracted much attention was the Romance of the Forest, which was followed by the Mysteries of Udolpho, a very popular and well conceived tale. Her the sum of £1500. Besides these works she last work, the Italian, produced her, it is said, published a quarto volume of Travels through Holland and along the Rhine, in 1793. Mrs. Radcliffe suffered much in the latter part of her life from asthma, of which she died in London, January 9th, 1823.

RADDOCK, or RUDDOCK, n.s. From red. A bird; the red breast.

The raddock would With charitable bill bring thee all this. Shakspeare,