S02 



VENUS'S FLV-TRAP VERB. 



tlie statues of female divinities aurirntly hail dra- 

 pery, and that tin- innovation of Praxiteles was 

 i-ouMdered extremely indecorous, but excused on 

 account of the beauty of the performance. Subse- 

 quent artists, wishing to reconcile a mode of repre- 

 sentation so favourable to the purposes of art with 

 the rules of decorum, adopted the form of drapery 

 seen in the Venus of Capua (in the Museo Borbonico 

 at Naples), and of Melos (in the Louvre), namely, 

 a mantle covering the lower part of the body, and 

 falling to the ground. The statues of Venus, 

 which, in imitation of that of Cnidus, are found in 

 a state of nudity, are almost always to be referred 

 to a low period. The Venus de' Medici was found 

 in the Villa Hadriana, at Tivoli, and carried to 

 Florence in 1695. It is only four feet eleven inches 

 and four lines in stature, but is exquisite in all its 

 forms and proportions. It is probably much injured 

 by the restored parts, the hands, &c. The most 

 celebrated statues of Venus are the following : 

 Venus Aphrodite, or Anadyomene, and the naked 

 Venus, with the right hand held over the breast, 

 and the left over the pudenda (the Venus de' Medi- 

 ci, in the ducal gallery of Florence), or standing on 

 a chariot of shells, drawn by Tritons and Nereids, 

 and wiping her hair. Many modern artists have 

 painted Venus : Titian excelled all others in the 

 voluptuous glow and the beauty of his figures. 

 Venus Urania was represented in Sparta with a bow 

 and arrows, or armed with a spear and a helmet. 

 In modern times, the Venus of Melos has been 

 found, and has attracted much attention. See, also, 

 Proserpina. Respecting the planet Venus, see 

 Planets. 



VENUS'S FLY-TRAP. See Dioneta. 



VERA CRUZ ; a state of the Mexican confeder- 

 acy, formed, with the states of Tabasco and Chiapa, 

 out of the former intendancy of Vera Cruz ; bounded 

 east by the gulf of Mexico, north by the state of 

 Tamaulipas, and west by Puebla and Mexico. It 

 is of great importance, in consequence of its con- 

 taining the harbours which form the principal means 

 of communication between the territory of the re- 

 public and the rest of the world. The eastern part, 

 along the coast., consists of hot and unhealthy plains, 

 while the western part forms the declivity of the 

 Cordilleras of Anahuac; and such is the steepness 

 of the mountains in this part of the country, that a 

 traveller may pass, in the course of a day, from suf- 

 focating heats to frosts, traversing, as it were, suc- 

 cessive layers of climates. (See Mexico.) Al- 

 though the soil is fertile, the state is thinly peopled, 

 in consequence of the unhealthiness of the climate, 

 and the preference given by the Spanish and native 

 Mexicans to the table-land as a place of residence. 

 It contains the volcano of Orizaba, having an eleva- 

 tion of 17,208 feet, and the coffer of Perote, 13,289 

 feet high, and familiar to navigators as the first land 

 seen when approaching the coast of Mexico. The 

 mountain of Tuxtla, also within its limits, is sub- 

 ject to volcanic eruptions. The principal towns 

 are Vera Cruz ; Xalapa, known in commerce as the 

 place supplying the greater part of the drug winch 

 has received its name (see Jalap), and celebrated 

 for the genial atmosphere and beautiful country in 

 which it is placed, with a population of 13,000 

 souls ; Tampico, an important seaport at the mouth 

 of a rjver of the same name, with 20,000 inhabit- 

 ants: and Papantla, with 8000 inhabitants. The 

 state has a population of 233,700 souls. Its chief 

 productions are tobacco, coffee, cotton, &c. 



VERA CRUZ ; a seaport of Mexico, in tne state 



of the same name, on the gulf of Mexico. 200 miles 

 east by south of Mexico ; Ion. 96 9' W. ; lat. 19 

 12' N. ; population, 30,000. Opposite to the town, 

 on a small island, stands the castle of St Juan d'l 1- 

 loa, fortified by 300 pieces of cannon. About 100 

 merchant vessels may anchor here, in from four to 

 ten fathoms; but the northern winds often drive 

 vessels on shore. The port is not commodious, 

 being merely a bad anchorage among shallows. 

 Vera Cruz is the great seaport of Mexico, aud the 

 place through which almost all the trade between 

 that country and Europe and the United States of 

 North America is carried on. The town is situated 

 on an arid plain, without running water, and on 

 which the north winds, which blow with dreadful 

 impetuosity from October to April, have formed 

 hills of moving sand, from twenty-six to thirty- 

 eight feet high, which change their form and situa- 

 tion every year. The city is handsomely and rt'- 

 gularly built, the streets broad and straight ; but 

 its cb'mate is hot and unhealthy, and extremely sub- 

 ject to the yellow fever. This dreadful distemper 

 generally commences its ravages when the mean 

 temperature rises to 75. In December, January 

 and February, when the heat remains below this 

 limit, it generally disappears. The buildings are 

 constructed from materials drawn from the bottom 

 of the ocean, the habitations of the madrepores ; 

 for no rock is to be found in the environs, though 

 freestone has now begun to be brought from Cam- 

 peachy. The ascent from the city into the interior, 

 which is a plain elevated nearly 8000 feet above 

 the level of the ocean, is through difficult and nar- 

 row roads. 



VERATRINE; a white, inodorous substance, 

 very sharp to the taste, without any bitterness, 

 found in the seed of the veratrum sabatilla, the V. 

 album, or white hellebore, and in the bulbs of the 

 colchicum autumnale, or meadow saffron. It fuses 

 at. 122, becoming a white mass, like wax. At a 

 higher degree of temperature, it decomposes, and 

 affords all the products of vegeto-animal substances. 

 It is soluble in ether and alcohol, wholly insoluble 

 in cold water : boiling water scarcely dissolves the 

 one thousandth part ; yet this small quantity com- 

 municates to it a very sensible sharpness of taste. In 

 a degree, it possesses alkaline properties, changes 

 litmus paper, reddened by an acid, blue, and satu- 

 rates the acids, with which it forms uncrystallizable 

 salts. Concentrated nitric acid decomposes it with- 

 out giving it a red colour. According to MM. Pel- 

 letier and Dumas, it consists of 



Carbou, 66-75 



Nitrogen, 5-04 



Hydrogen, , 8'54 



Oxygen, 19-60 



It exercises the same action upon the animal eco- 

 nomy as the hellebore, but with much greater 

 energy. 



VERB (from the Latin verbum) ; that important 

 part of speech in which a subject is conceived of 

 under certain relations of time. It therefore be- 

 longs to the, so called, attributive parts of speech, 

 or those which determine the predicate of the sub- 

 ject indicated by the noun. The idea of personali- 

 ty ; the various states of time, action and passion ; 

 the ideas of singular and plural, and numerous shades 

 of signification connected with it, render the verb 

 one of the most interesting subjects of investigation 

 to the philologist. What can be finer and more 

 delicate than the structure of the Greek verb ? 

 what more curious to a man whose native language 



