374 



STAFFORD STALACTITES. 



remarkable caves, as Great cave, 224 feet long ; 

 Boat cave, 150 feet long; Mackinmon's, or the 

 Si-art, or Cormorant's cave; and, above all, Fingal's 

 cave, which is celebrated, by those who have visited 

 it, in terms of high admiration. See Fingal's Cave, 

 and I It- fir t . 



STAFFORD; the county-town of Stafford- 

 shire, England, is situated on the bank of the river 

 Sow, six miles from its confluence with the Trent, 

 141 miles north-west by north from London. It 

 is an ancient borough, having been incorporated by 

 king John in the seventh year of his reign. For- 

 merly it was surrounded by a wall, and defended 

 by a castle, some remains of which still exist. The 

 chief trade of Stafford consists in tanning leather 

 and making shoes for exportation. The town is 

 handsomely built, principally of stone. Population 

 in 1831, 6,998. in 1841, 9,245. 



STAFFORDSHIRE; a central county of Eng- 

 land, bounded on the north by Cheshire and Derby- 

 shire, on the east by Leicestershire, on the west by 

 Shropshire, and on the south by Warwickshire and 

 Worcestershire. Its length from north to south is 

 about fifty-five miles, and its breadth from east to 

 west about twenty-four. The northern part of 

 Staffordshire, called the moorlands, is a rough 

 mountainous tract, chiefly devoted to sheep pastures. 

 The middle and southern parts are generally level 

 and fertile. The principal rivers of the county are, 

 the Trent, which is the third river in England, the 

 Dove, the Stour, the Blythe, the Tame, and the 

 Sow and the Penk, which last are all tributaries of 

 the Trent. Navigable canals, forming branches of 

 the Grand Trunk Canal, intersect the county. Coal 

 abounds in various parts of Staffordshire, particu- 

 larly in the Moorlands and the neighbourhood of 

 Newcastle-under-Lyne,and from Cannock Heath the 

 coal district extends southwards into Worcester- 

 shire. At Hanley is found a curious variety called 

 peacock coal, from the irridescent colours on its 

 surface. Other mineral products of Staffordshire 

 are iron, lead, and copper ores, marble, limestone, 

 freestone, potter's clay, alabaster, and red and yel- 

 low ochre ; at Langley close a kind of carbonaceous 

 matter or black chalk occurs in beds of gray mar- 

 ble ; and near Himley Hall is procured a sort of 

 reddish earth like French chalk. 



The chief agricultural produce of this county 

 consists of wheat, barley, oats, beans, and peas; 

 buckwheat is sometimes cultivated, and also hemp 

 and flax, but on a small scale ; cabbages are grown 

 extensively in some parts of the county, and also 

 Swedish turnips. Near the river, and especially 

 on the banks of the Trent, are fertile tracts of 

 meadow-land, where cattle are fed for the dairy, 

 and considerable quantities of cheese and butter are 

 produced. 



Staffordshire has long been famous for its potte- 

 ries, which, owing to the great improvements in 

 this branch of manufacture effected by Josiah 

 Wedgwood, (see the articles China and Wedgwood) 

 have vastly augmented the wealth and population 

 of the district in which they are situated, and raised 

 some formerly inconsiderable villages, as Hanley, 

 and Stoke-upon-Trent, to the rank of market- 

 towns. Some of the materials requisite for the 

 prosecution of this manufacture are found here in 

 abundance, as fire-clay, and coal, but the finer clays 

 are procured from Purbeck in Dorsetshire, and other 

 parts of that coast ; and flints from the Kentish 

 chalk-pits, and from Wales and Ireland. In the 

 neighbourhood of Ncwcastle-under-Lyne are iron- 



works; Wolverhampton is noted for the manufac 

 ture of locks, edge-tools, and japanned ware; Wai. 

 sail for sadler's ironmongery ; various kinds of hard- 

 ware are made at Pelsall, Sedgley, WestBrotmvick, 

 and other places ; and on the borders near Worces- 

 tershire are a number of large glass-houses. At 

 Rocester, on the Dove, Fazeley, Tutbury, and else- 

 where are considerable cotton-works ; the manufac- 

 ture of silk goods is carried on at Leek extensively; 

 that of boots and shoes at Stafford ; and the county 

 is noted for the excellence of its ale, especially that 

 which takes its name from the town of Burton- 

 upon-Trent. 



The -county is divided into five hundreds, viz. 

 Cuttlestone, Offlow, Pirehill, Seisdon, and Tot- 

 monslow. The only city is Lichfield ; the boroughs 

 are Stafford, Newcastle-under-Line,and Tamworth; 

 and the market towns, Burslem, Burton-on-Trent, 

 Cheadle, Eccleshall, Hanley, Lane-end, Leek, Long- 

 nor, Rugeley, Stoke-upon-Trent, Stone, Uttoxeter, 

 Walsall, Wednesbury, and Wolverhampton ; the 

 markets of Abbot's Bromley and Penkridge have 

 become obsolete. Population of Staffordshire in 

 1821, 341,040; in 1831, 410,485. in 1841, 510,504. 



STAG. See Deer. 



STAGGERS. See Stomach Staggers, and 

 Sturdy. 



STAHL, GEORGE ERNEST, a German physician 

 and chemist, born at Anspach, in 1660, studied, at 

 Jena, under Wedelius ; and, in 1687, became physi- 

 cian to the duke of Saxe- Weimar. In 1691, he was 

 chosen second professor of medicine at Halle, and 

 rendered his name famous over all Germany by his 

 academical prelections and his publications. He 

 was, in 1700, elected a member of the Academia 

 Curiosorum Naturae. His fame procured him the 

 appointment of physician to the king of Prussia, in 

 1716; and, going to Berlin, he died there, in 1734. 

 Stahl was one of the most illustrious medical phi- 

 losophers of his age : his name marks the commence- 

 ment of a new era in chemistry. He was the author 

 of the doctrine which explains the principal chemi- 

 cal phenomena by the agency of phlogiston; and 

 though his system was, in a great measure, over- 

 turned by the discoveries of Priestley, Lavoisier 

 and others, it nevertheless displays powerfully the 

 genius of the inventor. This theory maintained its 

 ground for more than half a century, and was re- 

 ceived and supported by some of the most eminent 

 men which Europe had produced. (See Chemistry, 

 and Oxygen.) He was also the proposer of a theory 

 of medicine, founded on the principle of the depen- 

 dence of the state of the body on the mind ; in con- 

 sequence of which he affirmed that every action of 

 the muscles is a voluntary effort of the mind, 

 whether attended with consciousness or not. His 

 principal works are Experimenta et Observations 

 Chymictz et Physicce (1731, 8vo.) ; Disputationes 

 Medicos (2 vols., 4to.) ; Theoria Medica vera 

 (1737) ; Fundamenta Chymite dogmatical et experi- 

 mcntalis (3 vols., 4to.). 



STAINER, OR STEINER, JACOB; a famous 

 maker of stringed instruments, near Hall, in Tyrol, 

 about the middle of the seventeenth century, and a 

 pupil of the famous violin maker Amati of Cremona. 

 He made, principally, violins. They are rare, and 

 bring 300 ducats apiece. He became insane to- 

 wards the end of his life. He died- in or before 

 1684. 



STAIR, LOR.D. See Dalrymple. 



STALACTITES are formed by the filtration 

 of water, containing calcareous particles, through 



