DRO 
Dressing, in surgery, the treatment of 
a wound or any disordered part. The ap-i 
paratus of dressing consists of dossils, tents, 
plasters, compresses, bandages, bands, liga- 
tures, and strings. 
DRIFT, in naval language, the angle 
which the line of a ship’s motion makes 
with the nearest meridian, when she drives 
with her side to the wind and waves, and 
is not governed by the power of the helm. 
It also implies the distance which the ship 
drives on that line. A ship’s way is only 
called drift in a storm, and then when it 
blows so vehemently as to prevent her from 
can-ying any sail, or at least restrain her to 
such a portion of sail as may be necessary 
to keep her sufficiently inclined to one 
side, that she may not be dismasted by her 
violent labouring, produced by the turbu- 
lence of the sea. 
DRILL, in mechanics, a small instru- 
ment for making such holes as punches will 
not conveniently serve for. Drills are of 
various sizes, and are chiefly used by smiths 
and turners. 
Drili., or Drill-box, a name given to 
an instrument for sowing land in the new 
method of horse-hoeing husbandry. It 
plants the corn in rows, makes the channels, 
sows the seeds in them, and covers them 
with eai'th when sown ; and all this at the 
same time, and with great expedition. The 
principal parts are tlie seed-box, the hop- 
per, the plough and its harrow, of all which 
the seed-box is tlie chief. It measures, or 
rather numbers, out the seeds which it re- 
ceives from the hopper, and is for this pur- 
pose as an artificial hand ; but it delivers 
out the seed much more equally rhan can 
be done by a natural hand. See Agricul- 
ture. 
DRINK, a part of our ordinary food in 
a liquid form, serving to dilute and moisten 
the dry meat. See Dietetics. 
DRIVING, in the sea language, is said 
of a ship when an anchor being let fall will 
not hold her fast, nor prevent her sailing 
away with the tide or wind. The best help 
in this case is to let fall more anchors, or to 
veer out more cable; for the more cable 
she has out, the safer she rides. When a 
ship is a-hull or a-try, they say she drives to 
leeward. 
DRONE, in the history of insects, a 
kind of bee, larger than the common work- 
ing or honey bees ; it is so called from its 
idleness, as never going abroad to collect 
either honey or wax. Se^ Apis. 
Drone, in music, the largest tube of the 
DRO 
bag-pipe ; the office of which is to emit one 
continued deep note, as an accompanying, 
bass to the air or tune played on the smaller 
pipes. 
DROPS, in meteorology, small spheri-' 
cal bodies which the particles of fluids spon- 
taneously form themselves into, when let 
fall from any height. This spherical figure, 
the Newtonian philosophers demonstrate to 
be the efiect of corpuscular attraction, for 
considering that the attractive force of one 
single particle of a fluid is equally exerted to 
an equal distance, it must follow that other 
fluid particles are on every side drawn to it, 
and will therefore take their places at an 
equal distance from it, and consequently 
form a round superficies. 
Drops, in medicine, a liquid remedy, 
the dose of which is estimated by a certain 
number of drops. 
DROPSY, in medicine, an unnatural 
collection of wateiy humours in any part 
of the body. See Medicine. 
DROSERA, in botany, a genus of tlie 
Pentandria Pentagynia class and order. 
Natural order of Gruinales. Capparides, 
Jussieu. Essential character : calyx five- 
cleft; petals five; capsule one-celled, five 
or three valved at the tip ; seeds very 
many. There are nine species. These are 
herbs of a small size, and singular struc- 
ture. The leaves in most of the species 
near the root, are furnished with glandulous 
hairs on the upper surface, and fringed 
round the edge ; these hairs have each a 
small globule of a pellucid liquor like dew, 
continuing even in the hottest part of the 
day, and in the fullest exposure to the sun. 
Hence their English name of sundew. D. 
acaulis is singular for having a sessile flower 
in the bosom of the root leaves. These 
plants have the property of entrapping 
small insects within their folded leaves. It 
was discovered by Mr. Whately, a surgeon. 
On inspecting some of the contracted leaves, 
he observed a fly in close imprisonment ; 
and on centrically pressing other leaves, 
yet in their expanded form, with a pin, he 
observed a sudden elastic spring of them, so 
as to become inverted upwards, and as it 
were encircling the pin. 
DROWNING, signifies the extinction 
of life, by a total immersion in water. In 
some respects there seems to be a great si- 
milarity between the death occasioned by 
immersion in water, and that by strangula- 
tion, suftbcation by fixed air, apoplexies, 
epilepsies, sudden fainting, violent shocks 
of- electricity, or even violent falls and 
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