css 
C O L 
C O L 
COL 
A reward of 40/. is given for convicting a 
counterfeiter of the gold or silver coin ; and 
10/. for a counterfeiter of tire copper coin. 
16 Geo. II. and 13 Geo. III. c. 23 and 77. 
Coining, in the tin-works, is the weigh- 
ing and stamping the blocks of tin with a 
lion rampant, performed by the king’s offi- 
cer ; the duty for every hundredweight 
being four shillings. 
COIX, JobVtears : a genus of the triand- 
ria order, in the monoecia class of plants; and 
iii the natural method ranking under . the 4th 
order, gramina. r l he male flowers grow in 
spikes remote from each other ; the calyx is 
a bulorous, beardless glume. The calyx of 
the female is a biitorous glume ; the corolla 
a beardless glume ; the style bipartite ; the. 
seed covered with the calyx ossified. There 
are three species, the principal of which, the 
eoix Iacryma, is a native of the East Indies, 
and frequently cultivated in Spain and Por- 
tugal. It is an annual plant, rising two feet 
from a fibrous root, with two or three jointed 
stalks, and single, long, narrow leaves at 
each joint, resembling those of the reed. At 
the base of the leave? come out the spikes 
of flowers standing on short footstalks; the 
seeds greatly resemble those of gromwell, 
v hence the plant has by some writers been 
called lithospermum. It may be propagat- 
ed in this country by seeds brought , from 
Portugal, and sown on a hot-bed; after which 
the young plants should be removed into a 
warm border, and planted two feet from each 
other. In Spain and Portugal the poor 
grind the seeds of this plant in times of scar- 
city, and make a coarse kind of bread of 
them. The seeds are inclosed in small cap- 
sules about the bigness of an English pea, 
and of different colours. These are strung 
upon silk, and used instead of bracelets, by 
some of the poorer sort in the . West Indiesj 
particularly by the negroes. 
^ COLARBASIANS, in church-history, 
Christian heretics, in the second century, 
who maintained the whole plenitude and per- 
fection of truth and religion to be contained 
in the Greek alphabet, and that it was upon 
this account that Jesus Christ was called. the 
alpha and omega : they rejected the Old Tes.- 
tament; and received only a part of St. Luke’s 
gospel, and ten of St. Paul’s epistles, in the 
New. 
COLARIN, in architecture, the little frize 
of the capital of the Tuscan and Doric co- 
lumns, placed between the astragal and the 
annulets ; called also hypotraehelium, and 
sometimes cincture. 
COLCHICUM, meadow-saffron: agerius 
of the trigynia order, in the hexandria class 
of plants, and in the natural method ranking 
under the 9th order, spathaceae. The co- 
rolla is sexpartite, with its. tube radicated, or 
having its root in the ground ; there are 
three capsules, connected and inflated. 
There are three species ; all bulbous-rooted 
perennials, possessing the singular property of 
their leaves appearing at one time, and their 
flowers at another ; the former rising long 
and narrow from the root in spring, and de- 
caying in June; the flowers (which are mono- 
petalous, long, tubular, erect, and six-parted) 
rise naked from the root in autumn, not 
more than 4 or 5 inches. Their colours af- 
ford a beautiful variety ; being purple, va- 
riegated purple, white, red, rose-coloured, 
yellow, Ac. with single and double flowers. 
They are all hardy plants, insomuch tha 
they will flower though the roots lie out of 
the ground ; but by this they are much 
weakened. The root of this plant is poison- 
ous. When young and full of sap, its taste is 
very acrid ; but when old, mealy and faint. 
Two drachms of it killed a large dog in 13 
hours, operating violently by stool, vomit, 
and urine. One grain of it swallowed by a 
healthy man, produced heats in the stomach, 
and soon after Hushing heats in different 
parts of the body, with frequent shiverings, 
followed by colicky pains ; after which an 
itching in the loins and urinary passages was 
perceived ; then came on a continual incli- 
nation to make water, a tenesmus, pain in the 
head, quick pulse, thirst, and other disagree- 
able symptoms. Notwithstanding these ef- 
fects, however, an infusion of roots in vine- 
gar, formed into a syrup with honey or su- 
gar, proves a safe and powerful pectoral and 
diuretic, and is often of service in dropsies, 
&c. The virtues of colchicum seem much 
to resemble those of squills. 
Colchicum variegatum, one of the three 
species above-mentioned. Its roots are said 
to afford the hermodactyle of the apotheca- 
ries. 
COLD. When caloric combines with em- 
bodies, or separates from them, we ex- 
perience, in the first case, the sensation of 
heat, in the second cold. When the 
hand is put upon a hot iron, part of the ca- 
loric leaves the iron, and enters the hand ; 
this produces the sensation of heat. On the 
contrary, when the hand is put upon a lump 
of ice; the caloric rapidly leaves the hand 
and combines with the ice; this produces 
the sensation ot cold. The sensation of heat 
is occasioned by caloric passing into our bo- 
dies; the sensation of cold by caloric passing 
out of our bodies. We say that a body is 
hot when it communicates caloric to the 
surrounding bodies: we call it cold when it 
absorbs caloric from other bodies. The 
strength of the sensations of heat and cold 
depends upon the rapidity with which the 
caloric enters or leaves our bodies; and this 
rapidity is proportional to the difference of 
the temperature between our bodies and the 
hot or. cold substance, and to the conducting 
power of that substance. The higher the 
temperature of a body is, the stronger a sen- 
sation ot. heat does it communicate; and the 
lower the temperature, the stronger a sensa- 
tion of cold ; and when the temperature is 
the same, the sensations depend ‘ upon the 
conducting power of the substance. Thus 
what in common language is called cold, is 
nothing else than the absence of the usual 
quantity of caloric. When we say that a 
substance is cold, .we mean merely that it 
contains less caloric than usual, or that its 
temperature is lower than that of our bo- 
dies. 
There have been philosophers, however, 
who maintained that cold is produced, not 
by the abstraction of caloric merely, but by 
the addition of a positive something, of a 
peculiar body, endowed with specific qua- 
lities. According to them, cold is a sub- 
stance of a saline nature, very much resem- 
bling nitre, constantly floating in the air, and 
wafted about by the wind in very minute 
corpuscles, to which they gave the name of 
frigoriiic particles. They were induced to 
adopt this hypothesis, because they could 
1 not otherwise account for the freezing of wa- 
I ter. According to them, these frigorifio 
particles insinuate themselves like wedges 
between the molecules of water, destroy their 
mobility, and thus convert water into ice. 
Dr. Black, by discovering the cause of the 
freezing of water, banished the frigorific par- 
ticles from the regions of philosophy; be- 
cause tiie advocates for them never brought 
any other proof for their existence than the 
convenience with which they accounted for 
certain appearances. Of course, as soon as 
these appearances were explained without 
their use, every reason for supposing their 
existence was destroyed. The only fact 
which gives any countenance to the opinion 
that cold is a body, has been furnished by 
the following very curious experiments of 
Mr. Pictet. Two concave tin mirrors being 
placed at the distance of 10-f feet from each 
other, a very delicate air-thermometer was 
put into one of the foci, and a glass matrass 
lull of snow into the other. The thermometer 
sunk several degrees, and rose again when 
the matrass was removed. When nitric acid 
was poured upon the snow (which increases 
the cold), the thermometer sunk live or six 
degrees lower. Hero cold seems to have 
been emitted by the snow, and reflected by 
the mirrors to the thermometer, which could 
not happen, unless cold was a substance. 
The experiment is certainly highly interest- 
ing, and deserving a more accurate exami- 
nation than lias been hitherto bestowed on 
it. In order to explain it, we must recollect 
that caloric is constantly radiating from all 
bodies. It is evident that the temperature 
ot the thermometer, like that of all other bo- 
dies, is maintained partly by the irradiation 
of caloric from the surrounding bodies. It. 
must therefore, since it is placed in the focus 
ot one of the mirrors, be affected by whatever 
body is placed in the focus of the other. If 
that body is colder than the surrounding bo- 
dies, less caloric will be eradiated from it, 
and thrown upon the thermometer ; conse- 
quently the thermometer will be depressed 
till the deficiency is supplied by some other 
channel. Such nearly is the explanation of 
this singular fact offered by Prevost and Dr. 
Hutton ; but it cannot be denied that this ex- 
planation, ingenious as it is, is very far from 
being satisfactory. 
A very great degree of cold may be pro- 
duced by mixing together different solids, 
which suddenly become liquid. But a? such 
mixtures are often employed in chemistry* 
in order to be able to expose bodies to the 
influence of a low temperature, it will be 
worth while to enumerate the different sub- 
stances which may be employed for that pur- 
pose, and the degree of cold which each of 
them is capable of producing. The first 
person who made experiments on freezing 
mixtures was Fahrenheit. But the subject 
was much more completely investigated by 
Mr. Walker, in a paper published in the 
Philosophical Transactions for 1795. Since 
that time -several curious additions have been 
made by professor Low’itz, particularly the 
introduction of muriat of lime, which pro- 
duces a very great degree of cold when 
mixed with snow. The experiments of 
Lowitz have been lately repeated and ex- 
tended by Mr. Walker. The result of ail 
these experiments may be seen in the fol- 
lowing table. 
