DUM 
DUKE is either tlie title of a sovereign 
prince, as the Duke of Savoy, Parma, &c. 
the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Muscovy, &c. 
or it is the title of honour and nobility next 
below princes. The commanders of armies 
in time of war, tlie governors of provinces, 
and wardens of marches, in time of peace, 
were called duces, under the latter emperors. 
The Gotlis and Vandals divided all Gaul 
into dutchies and counties, the governors of 
which they sometimes call duces, and some- 
times comites. In France, under tlie second 
race of kings, though they retained the 
name and form of ducal government, there 
were scarce any dukes except those of 
Burgundy, Aquitain, and France. In Eng- 
land, among the Saxons, the commanders 
of armies, &c. were called dukes, duces, 
without any addition, till Edward III. 
made his son, the Black Prince, Duke of 
Cornwall ; after whom there were more 
made in the same manner, the title descend- 
ing to their posterity. Duke, then, at pre-, 
sent, is a mere title of dignity, without giv- 
ing any domain, territory, or jurisdiction, 
over tlie place from whence the title is 
taken, A duke is created by patent, cinc- 
ture of sword, mantle of state, imposition 
of a cap and coronet of gold on his head, 
and a verge of gold put into his hand. His 
title is Grace ; and, in the style of the 
heralds. Most high, potent, high-born, and 
noble prince. 
DULCIMER, in music, is a triangular 
instrument, strung with about fifty wires cast 
over a bridge at each end, the shortest, or 
most acute of which is about eighteen 
inches long, and the longest or most grave 
tliirty-six. It is performed upon by strik- 
ing the wires by little iron rods. 
DUMBN ESS, the privation of the faculty 
of speech. The most general, or rather the 
sole cause of dumbness, is the want of the 
sense of hearing. The use oflanguage is origi, 
nglly acquired byimitating articulate sounds. 
From tills source of intelligence deaf people 
are entirely excluded ; they cannot acquire 
articulate sounds by the ear ; unless, there- 
fore, articulation be communicated to them 
by some other medium these unhappy people 
must for ever be deprived of the use of 
language : and as language is tlie principal 
source of knowledge, whoever has the mis- 
fortune to want the sense of hearing must 
remain in a state little superior to that of 
the brute creation. Deafness has in all 
ages been considered as such a total ob- 
struction to speech or written language, 
that an attempt to teach the deaf to speak 
DUN 
or read has been uniformly regarded as im- 
practicable, till Dr. Wallis, and some otliers, 
have of late shown, tliat although deaf 
people cannot learn to speak or read by the 
direction of the ear, there are other sources 
of imitation by which the same efiect may 
be produced. The organs of hearing and 
of speech have little or no connexion. 
Persons deprived of the former generally 
possess the latter in such perfection that 
nothing further is necessary, in order to 
make them articulate, than to teach them 
how to use these organs. This, indeed, is 
no easy task ; but experience shew'S that it is 
practicable. Mr. Thomas Braidwood, late 
of Edinburgh, was perhaps the first who 
ever brought this surprising art to any de- 
gree ot perfection. He began with a single 
pupil in 1764, and since that period has 
taught great numbers of people born deaf 
to speak distinctly, to read, to write, to 
understand figures, the principles of reli- 
gion and morality, &c.. 
But a new and ditferent method, equally 
laborious and successful, we understand, is 
practised by the Abbe de I’Epee of Berlin. 
AVe are informed tliat he begins his instruc- 
tions not by endeavouring to form the or- 
gans of speech to articulate sounds, but by 
commurdcating ideas to the mind by means 
of signs and. characters : to effect this, he 
writes the names of things ; and, by a regu- 
lar system of signs, establishes a connexion 
between tliese words and the ideas to be 
excited by them. After he has thus fur- 
nished his pupils with ideas and a medium 
of communication, he teaches them to ar- 
ticulate and pronounce, and renders them 
wot only grammarians but logicians. In 
this manner he has enabled one of his pupils 
to deliver a Latin oration in public, and 
another to defend a thesis against the objec- 
tions of one of his fellow pupils in a scho- 
lastic disputation ; in which the arguments 
of each were communicated to the other, 
but whether by signs or in writing is not 
said. 
DUMOSA, (from Dumus, a bush) bushy 
plants ; the name of the forty-third order ip 
Linnajus’s Fragments of a Natural Method; 
consisting of a number of shrubl;y plants, 
w'hich are thick set with irregular branches, 
and bushy. 
DUNG, in husbandry, is of several sm ts, 
as that of horses, cows, sheep, hogs, pigeons, 
geese, hens, &c. See Agriculture. 
llUNGEON, in fortification, tlie highest 
part of a castle built after the ancient 
mode ; serving as a W'atch-tovver, or place 
