SPRINGS, MINERAL. 



SQUARE. 



733 



French " puit," but a spring), are determined in general by one of 

 three things : 



1. They occur at the point of lowest level, on the edge of the 

 impervious clay which dams up the water. This happens in the 

 cretaceous and oolitic districts of England. 



2. They are often dependent on the lines of great joints, or fissures 

 of the rocks, produced in the course of the consolidation and shrinking 

 of the mineral masses. Large springs are thus poured out of the 

 mountain-limestone of England. 



3. The waters are directed to the surface by lines of fault, which are 

 often quite impervious to water, and traverse the rocks in vertical or 

 inclined planes. The hot springs of England and Wales are mostly 

 thus circumstanced. 



In general, then, the water which issues from the earth in one 

 copious spring has been received by minute absorption on a large 

 surface : as the living tissue of a sponge receives water by absorption 

 through the numerous pores, collects it internally in a few channel?, 

 and rejects it by a very limited number of orifices, or as the capillaries 

 collect blood for the veins, and these supply the heart, so the porous 

 texture and channelled structures of rocks permit that continual 

 circulation of water below the earth's surface, on which, in a great 

 degree, its habitable character depends. 



Between perennial or constant springs, and those which are merely 

 dependent on the last shower of rain, the gradations are insensible, 

 and the explanation is entirely obvious upon the general principles 

 stated. One of the most interesting cases of this intermediate series, is 

 that of the " intermitting " springs. It is a common circumstance on 

 the chalk downs of the South of England (Wiltshire, Dorsetshire) for 

 the valleys to be quite dry in one part of the year (autumn or winter), 

 and very fully watered in another (spring, summer) ; the springs 

 bursting higher up the valley in some years than in others, according 

 to the quantity of rain which fell in some previous season (as the 

 autumn), and the rate of its transmission through the jointed and 

 absorbent chalk. 



Another peculiarity of springs Bowing out of cavernous limestone 

 rocks is marked by a variable discharge ; the springs now gush with 

 vehemence, now subside, shrink away, and disappear. These ebbing 

 and flowing wells are noticed in many districts, as near Dynevor in 

 Caermarthenahire, at Tideswell in Derbyshire, and near Settle in 

 Yorkshire. The explanation most generally received supposes the 

 water to fill cavities underground, from which the discharging channels 

 are siphon- formed, so that at a particular moment the full cavity 

 begins to be discharged and finally runs out, and the current then 

 CffOfii till the space be again filled to the vertex of the siphon-formed 

 arch. 



In thus descending downwards and rising upwards through various 

 mineral masses, springs become impregnated with gaseous, saline, 

 earthy, or metallic admixtures as carbonic acid gas, sulphuretted 

 hydrogen gas, nitrogen, muriate of soda, sulphate of lime, carbonate of 

 lime, silica, carbonate of iron, &c. [ARTESIAX WELL ; WATERS, 

 MINERAL.] 



SPRINGS. MINKRAL. [WATEHS, MINERAL.] 



SPY. In the discussion of this and many other questions of inter- 

 national law the terms Right, Law, Lawful, and others of the same 

 class, must be understood in a different sense from their proper 

 technical meaning. What writers on international law speak of as a 

 Right is very often merely what appears fair, reasonable, or expedient 

 to be done, or to be permitted. It is this reasonableness or expediency 

 alone which is the foundation of those various usages which are recog- 

 nised by independent civilised nations in their intercourse among one 

 another, and constitute what is called the Law of Nations. Thus a 

 person or a power is said to have a right according to the Law of 

 Nations, which means that the usage of civilised nations permits the 

 act, and this is the least objectionable sense in which the word Right 

 j used. 



No doubt, we believe, has ever been , intimated by any writer of 

 authority on International Law, as to the right of nations at war with 

 each other to avail themselves of the service of spies, or secret 

 emissaries, in carrying on their hostile operations : and still more 

 expressly is the general right of employing spies conceded to every 

 conductor of military operations ; but it is equally admitted that spies 

 when caught by the enemy may be hung, and such is their usual fate. 

 Vattel says, " A man of honour always declines serving as a spy, as 

 well from his reluctance to expose himself to this chance of an 

 ignominious death, as because, moreover, the office cannot be performed 

 without some degree of treachery." In ordinary cases, he adds. " the 

 general must be left to procure spies in the best way he can, by 

 tempting mercenary souls by rewards." 



The employment of spies is conceived to be subject to certain 

 limitations in respect to the manner of it and the object attempted to 

 be gained by it. " We may lawfully endeavour," says Vattel, " to 

 weaken the enemy by all possible means, provided they do not affect 

 the common safety of human society, as do poison and assassination." 

 Accordingly the proper business of a spy is merely to obtain intelli- 

 gence, and such secret emissaries must not be employed to take the 

 fives of any of the enemy, although that, done in another way, is 

 commonly the main immediate object of the war. Yet it might be 

 somewhat difficult to establish a clear distinction between what would 



ARTS AXO SCI. DIY. VOI.. Til. 



be called an act of assassination by a spy, and many of thosejsurprises 

 of an enemy which, so far from being condemned or deemed dis- 

 honourable to the Actors, have usually been admired. A distinction 

 however has been taken ; and it has been maintained that an officer or 

 soldier cannot be treated as a spy if he had his uniform on when 

 apprehended. See Martens ' Precis du Droit des Gens Modernes de 

 1'Europe' (traduit de 1'AUemand), Paris, 1831, liv. viii., ch. iv., 274; 

 where references are made to Bruckner, ' De Explorationibus et 

 Exploratoribus,' Jen., 1700; to Hannov., 'Gel. Anzeigen,' 1751, pp. 

 383 et seq. ; and, in regard to the celebrated case of Andrd in the 

 American war, to Martens, ' Erziihlungen merkwurdiger Fiille,' i. 303 ; 

 and to Kamptz, ' Beytriige zum Staats und Volkerrecht,' torn. 1., No. 3. 



A question closely connected with the so-called lawfulness of 

 employing spies, and indeed forming in one view a part of that question, 

 is that of the lawfulness of soliciting the enemy's subjects to act as 

 spies, or to betray him. Such measures, says Vattel, are practised in 

 all wars, but they are not honourable nor compatible with the laws of 

 a pure conscience. " If such practices," he concludes, " are at all 

 excusable, it can be only in a very just war, and when the immediate 

 object is to save our country when threatened with ruin by a lawless 

 conqueror. On such an occasion (as it should seem) the guilt of the 

 subject or general who should betray his sovereign when engaged in an 

 evidently unjust cause would not be of so very odious a nature." But 

 who ever heard of a war that was not thought by those engaged in it 

 to be a just war on their own side and an unjust war on the part of 

 their adversaries 1 So that this distinction settles nothing. It is held, 

 however, to be perfectly allowable in every point of view merely to 

 accept the offers of a traitor. 



The proper question as to the so-called law of nations with regard to 

 spies, is what practices are sanctioned by the general usage of indepen- 

 dent civilised nations. Such practices as are now permitted by such 

 usage constitute a part of this so-called international law. Those 

 practices which are not generally permitted or acknowledged are not 

 yet a part of such law. Persons who have occasion to write or think 

 on this subject will find that much of the indistinctness and confusion 

 observable in the treatises on the law of nations will be removed if 

 they will first form for themselves a clear conception of the proper 

 meaning of the word Law, and of the improper meanings which it has 

 also acquired ; and they will thus be enabled to give the necessary 

 precision to those terms which are used so vaguely by writers on 

 international law. [LAW ; RIGHT.] 



SQUADRON is supposed to be derived from " squadra " (Italian), 

 which is itself corrupted from the Latin word " quadratum ; " acies 

 quadrate denoted a body of men drawn up in a square form. The 

 term " escadron " occurs in Froissart's ' Chronicles,' and probably it 

 was very early used in the French armies to designate a body of 

 cavalry. It is generally used to designate a part of a fleet, or even of 

 au army. Milton speaks of '.squadron'd ' angels. Technically, however, 

 it means the principal division of a regiment of cavalry, which is 

 divided into two troops, each of which is commanded by its captain, 

 who has under him a lieutenant and a cornet. 



The strength of an army, with respect to cavalry, is usually ex- 

 pressed by the number of squadrons in the field, as it is with respect 

 to infantry by the number of battalions. 



For the manner in which a regiment of cavalry is encamped, see 

 ENCAMPMENT. 



SQUARE. We believe that the old English meaning of this word 

 had reference only to the corners of a figure, or at most to right-angled 

 corners. The old word for any oblong, or rectangle, is a four-square 

 figure ; the carpenter's rule for drawing a right angle is called a 

 T-square to this day. The French word querre (anciently esquerre, 

 originally derived, like the Italian squadra, from quadratum) is the 

 immediate origin ; and this (in French) means also an instrument for 

 drawing a right angle. In Recorde's ' Ground of Arts,' the earliest 

 English geometry extant, he calls what is now a square by the name of 

 square quadrate (square, right-angled, quadrate, four-sided figure) ; and 

 it is not until he is considerably advanced in his work that he seems to 

 find out that he may drop the second word and retain the first only. 

 There was still an incorrectness, for a square figure should have meant 

 one having all its angles right angles ; that is, what we now call a rect- 

 angle, whether its sides were equal or not. To complete the proof of 

 connection between the square and the right-angled corner, we may 

 mention that before now a right-angled triangle has been called a 

 square. In or about 1613, Thomas Bedwell published a work, of which 

 the title was ' Trigonum Architectonicum, the Carpenter's Squire.' 



In geometry, a square means a four-sided plane figure with all its 

 sides equal, and all its angles right angles. In algebra, it signifies the 

 number produced by multiplying a number by itself. The reason of 

 the double meaning is obvious enough. [RECTANGLE.] A square of 

 7 units long contains 7x7 square units ; so that the operation 7x7 

 is the arithmetic of finding the content of a square of 7 units in 

 length and breadth. We have spoken, in the article just cited, of the 

 confusion which is caused by this double use of the word square ; and 

 proposed to correct it by speaking of the square on a line in geometry, 

 ami the square of a number in algebra. It has been the fashion of late 

 years to publish what are called symbolical editions of Euclid, in which 

 A B' : is made to stand for the square on the line A B, because a* stands 

 for the square of the number ct. The learner who uses this species of 



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