BEA 
deep into the water with an over light 
freight, and thereby can carry but a small 
quantity of goods. 
Bearing of a piece of timber, among car- 
penters, the space either between the two 
fixed extremities thereof, when it has no 
other support, which they call bearing at 
length, or between one extreme and a post, 
brick wall, &c. trimmed up between the 
ends to shorten its bearings. 
BEAT, in music, a transient grace note, 
struck immediately before the note it is in- 
tended to ornament. The beat always lies 
half a note beneath its principal, and should 
be heard so closely upon it, that they may 
almost seem to be struck together. 
Beat of drum, in the military art, to 
give notice by beat of drum of a sudden dan- 
ger ; or that scattered soldiers may repair to 
their arms and quarters, is to beat an alarm, 
or to arms ; also to signify, by different man- 
ners of sounding a drum, that the soldiers 
are to fall on the enemy ; to retreat before, 
in, or after an attack ; to move, or march, 
from one place to another ; to treat upon 
terms, or confer with the enemy ; to permit 
the soldiers to come out of their quarters at 
break of day ; in order to repair to their 
colours, &c. is to beat a charge, a retreat, a 
march, &c. 
BEATING gold and silver. See Good 
Beating. 
Beating time, in music, a method of 
measuring and marking the time for per- 
formers in concert-, by the motion of the 
hand and foot up and down successively, 
and in equal times. Knowing the true time 
of a crotchet, and supposing the measure ac- 
tually subdivided into four crotchets, and the 
half measure into two, the hand or foot being 
up, if we put it down with the very begin- 
ning of the first note or crotchet, and then 
raise it with the third, and then down with 
the beginning of the next measure ; this is 
called beating the time ; and by practice a 
habit is acquired of making this motion very 
equal. Each down and up is sometimes 
called a time, or measure. 
The general rule is, to contrive the division 
of the measure so, that every down and up 
of the beating shall end with a particular 
note, on which very much depends the dis- 
tinctness, and, as it were, the sense of the 
melody. Hence the beginning of every 
time or beating in the measure is reckoned 
the accented part thereof. 
If time be common, or equal, the beating 
is also equal; two down apd two up, or one 
down and one up : if the time be triple, or 
VOL. I. 
BEA 
unequal, the beating is also unequal; two 
down and one up. 
BEATINGS, in music, those regular pulsa- 
tive heavings or swellings of sound, produced 
in an organ by pipes ot the same key when 
they are not exactly in unison, i. e when 
their vibrations are not perfectly equal in 
velocity ; not simultaneous and coincident. 
BEATS, in music, are certain pulsations 
of two continued sounds, as in an organ, that 
are out of tune, occasioned by warring vi- 
brations that prevent coincidence in any two 
concords. This phenomenon Dr. Smith has 
made the foundation of a system of tem- 
perament. In tuning musical instruments, 
especially organs, it is a known thing, that/ 
' while a consonance is imperfect it is not 
smooth and uniform as when perfect, but in- 
terrupted with very sensible undulations or 
beats, which while the two sounds continue 
at the same pitch succeed one another in 
equal times, and in longer and longer times, 
while either of the sounds approaches gra- 
dually to a perfect consonance with the 
other, till at last the undulations vanish, and 
have a smooth and uniform consonance. 
These beats are of use in tuning an organ to 
any degree of exactness. The beats of two 
dissonant organ pipes resemble the beating 
of the pulse to the touch : and like the hu- 
man pulse in a fever, the more dissonant 
are the sounds the quicker they beat, and 
the slower as they become better in tune, 
till at length they are lost in the coincident 
vibrations of the two sounds. 
B eats, in a watch or clock, are the strokes 
made by the fangs or pallets of the spindle 
of 'the balance, or of the pads in a royal 
pendulum. To find the beats of the ba- 
lance in all watches going, or in one turn 
of any wheel. Having found the number of 
turns which the crown-wheel makes in one 
turn of the wheel you seek for, those turns 
of the crown-wheel multiplied by its notches 
give half the number of beats in that one 
turn of the wheel. For the balance or 
swing has two strokes to every tooth of the 
crown-wheel, inasmuch as each of the two 
pallets hath its blow against each tooth of 
the crown-wheel ; whence it is that a pen- 
dulum that beats seconds has in its crown- 
wheel only 30 teeth. See Watch-work. 
BEAVER, in zoology. See Castor. 
BEAUTY, a general term for whatever 
excites in us pleasing sensations, or an idea 
of approbation. 
Hence the notion annexed to beauty may 
be distinguished into ideas and sensations : 
the former of which occupy the mind; 
K k 
