DEL SUPPLEMENT. DEM 



*ras, that the plague would cease when they , ocean bed would be quite enough to drown 

 had doubled the altar of the god. The altar, the tops of the highest mountains as well as 

 being a cube, this problem involved the du- all the continents with which they are cou- 



jolication of the cube, q. 



DELITESCENCE, the sudden and unex- 

 pected subsidence of a tumour. (From Lat. 



nected ; and that any serious stoppage of the 

 whole of the existing volcanic vents or 

 safety-valves, as they may justly be called, 



delitescere, " to lie concealed.") |of the modern world would be quite enough 



DELPHINIC ACID, a fat acid yielded by to cause such a calamity at any time, and in 

 the oil of the porpoise, Delphinus, on sapo- j ust such a direction : for the seabeds arepre- 

 nification ; synonymous with Phoeenic Acid, sumably the tMnuest portion of the earth's 

 The same acid may also be obtained from crust, and the most easily upheaved ; and 

 the berries of Viburnum opiiJus. the weight of water above them is not equal 



DELPHJNITE, a variety of Epidote, from to the weight of an equal volume of land. 

 Dauphiuy. The deluge is therefore, demonstrable/, pos- 



PELUGE, the flood described in Gen. vii., gible on a due consideration of existing 

 Tiii. There is a great and contemporaneous ' conditions ; and, in refutation of the evi- 

 series of post-tertiary deposits, extending denees referred to by Agassiz and others, the 

 over all known countries, and well marked |om lies upon thosewho maintain an opposite 

 in Europe, Asia, Australia, and America J view to show it never occurred. [JT- A. S.] 

 which a certain school of geologists have] DEMAGOGUE, strictly a political leader of 

 rather evaded than explained, but which do the people ; and originally an honourable epi- 

 not admit of a complete and united inter- 1 thet, almost synonymous with "patriot." 

 pretation on any other hypothesis than the Now it is used chiefly to designate agitators 

 submergence of the whole continents of the . aud disturbers of the public peace, who are 

 world after their permanent conformation, seeking their own interests and capital by 

 Agassiz, one of the most careful, accurate, disorder. 



and unimpeachably honest of modern ob- 

 servers, and unquestionably one of those 

 gifted with the highest intellectual capacity, 

 distinctly declared that he found evidence 

 everywhere that after the permanent 



and its present arrangements of hill and 

 dale the remains extant on its sur- 

 face showed that for a period it had been 

 covered with icebergs. The question in- 

 Tolved is, whether this could have occurred 

 by any other means than such a general 

 rising of the waters on the surface of the 



DEMAND, in political economy, that fea 

 ture of commercial operations which is more 

 or less synonymous with the consuming 

 power ol the market. One of the most im- 

 portant of the discoveries realized by mo- 



upheaval of the European continent dern civilization is, that the tuppJy in many 



instances creates the demand. In articles 

 of taste this is especially so. Hence, when- 

 ever an ordinary supply has satisfied the de- 

 mand of a market, a further or new demand 

 may be stimulated by change of pattern or 

 fashion, or the production of any ingenious 

 novelty. This is one of the most important 



earth as would disengage the Arctic ice from | features of modern prosperity. 



its polar attachments, and float it southward RATION. [J. A. 8.] 



on that current which he found had left si- DEMARCATION, LINE OF, the imaginary 



multaneous evidence of its passage over Eu- 

 rone in a south-easterly direction. This is 



line through the ocean fixed by Pope Alex- 

 ader VI. in 1493, to put an end to the dif- 



but one fact among many of a concurring fereuces between Spain and Portugal as to 

 character belonging to the same period. Cer- the boundaries of their discoveries in the 

 tain geologists have been obliged, when | New World. By this line the conterminous 

 pressed for an explanation, to suggest the boundary of the dominions of each of those 

 possibility of a change in the polar axis of powers was decided, and the expression 

 the earth : but this explains one difficulty thence came into general use as an equiva- 

 only by suggesting a greater for which there lent expression for a boundary line separat- 

 is no trace of justification. They have also ing any space or tract from another, 

 asked, for the purpose of repelling the in- DEMIDRGUS, DEMIURGE, or LOGOS, in 

 quiry, where the water necessary to consti- Platonic philosophy, a superior or mysterious 

 tute such a deluge could have been ob- agent by whose instrumentality God is said 

 tained. But surely those who ask such a to have created the universe. The Platoniz- 

 question must have read Genesis vii. 11 with ing Christians held that this was the Second 

 rery little attention, It there says that one Person of the sacred Trinity, or God incar- 

 of the first features of the deluge was that nate ; identifying the term "Logos" in 

 all the fountains (or reservoirs) of the great Pluto's Timceus with the "Logos" or 

 deep were broken up ; an1 any one who has "Word" in the first chapter of St. John's 

 made himself at all acquainted with the dis- Gospel: "In the beginning was ihe Logos," Ac. 

 tribution of land and water on the surface of DEMOTIC WRITING, a current hand of 

 the world does not require to be told that the ancient Egyptians, wherein they con- 

 the bulk of the ocean preponderates so much verted the hieroglyphic characters into a 

 over the bulk of the land above its ordinary nearly alphabetical arrangement of the els- 

 ierel, that a small upheaval of the general ments of their language. 

 733 



