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622 
large piece of moift ground be ready, the cuttings maybe 
placed at fuch a dill a nee as not to approach too near 
each other before they are of fufficient lize to plant where 
they are to remain, which would fave the expenfe 
and trouble of a removal. The eaftern plane will alfo 
grow from cuttings, but not fo certainly. Mr. Boutcher 
recommends cuttings of the American plane to be 
planted at the beginning of March, in fhady borders, 
two feet row from row, and eight or ten inches in the 
rows ; if they are torn afunder at the joints with a knob 
of the old wood left, they will grow more readily. Tiiefe 
cuttings (hould be a foot or fourteen inches long, and 
buried about eight inches deep. In two years they may 
be removed. However propagated, after two years they 
may be planted out, in rows three feet and a half 
afunder, and eighteen inches in the rows, there to remain, 
or be tranfplanted after three years to another nurfery, 
in row's fix feet afunder, and three feet in the rows, 
where they may Hand fix or feven years. The feafon 
for tranfplanting the planes is March, and they delight 
in a moift deep ground, efpecially the American fort. 4 
PLATE, f [from platting, Sax. lamina ; or from the 
Gr. nXxTvi;, fiat.] A piece of metal beat out into breadth. 
—Make a plate, and burnilh it as they do iron. Jiacnn .— 
The cenfers of rebellious Corah, &c. were by God’s man¬ 
date made plates for the covering of the holy altar. White. 
■—A leaden bullet-fliot from one of thefe guns, the fpace 
of twenty paces, will be beaten into a thin plate. Wilkins. 
—The cenfers of thefe wretches, who could derive no 
fluidity to them; yet in that they had been confecrated 
by the offering incenfe, w ere appointed to be beaten into 
broad plates, and faftened upon the altar. South. 
Eternal deities! 
Who write whatever time fiiall bring to pafs 
With pens of adamant on plates of brafs. Dryden. 
Broad folid armour, as diftinguilhed from mail, which was 
compofed of fmall pieces or feales.—Mangled with ghaftly 
wounds through plate and mail. Milton's P. L. 
With their force they pierc’d both plate and mail, 
And made wide furrows in their fielhes frail. SpenJ’cr. 
Plata, Span.] Wrought filver.—The Turks entered 
nto the trenches fo far, that they carried away the plate. 
Knolles. 
At your defert bright pewtercomes too late, 
When your fir ft courfie w f as all ferv’d up in plate. King. 
What nature wants has an intrinfick weight; 
All more, is but the fafhion of the plate. Young. 
PLATE, f. A fmall fhallow velfel of metal, wood, 
china, or earthenware, on which meat is eaten : 
Afcanius this obferv’d, and, fmiling, faid, 
See, we devour the plates on which we fed. Dryden. 
To PLATE, v. a. To cover with plates.—M. Lepidus’s 
Iicufe had a marble door-cafe ; afterwards they had gilded 
ones, or rather plated with gold. Arbuihnot. —To arm 
with plates.—Why plated in habiliments of war? Shakef- 
peare. 
Plate fin with gold, 
And the ftrong lance of juftice hurtlefs breaks. Shaliefp. 
To beat into laminae or plates.—If a thinned or plated 
body, of an uneven thicknefs, which appears all over of 
one uniform colour, (hould be flit into threads of the fame 
thicknefs with the plate; I fee no reafon why every 
thread fhould not keep its colour. Newton. 
If to fame alone thou doft pretend, 
The mifer will his empty palace lend, 
Set wide his doors, adorn’d with plated brafs. Dryden. 
PLA'TEN, f [from plat, Fr. fiat.] Among printers, 
the flat part of th,e prefs whereby the impreflion is made. 
.PLA'TER (Felix), fon of a phyiician of the Valais, 
P L A 
who fettled at Bafil, and became principal of the college 
in that city, was.born in 1536. He ftudied firft ,under 
his father; and in his eighteenth year went to Mont¬ 
pellier, where he took the degree of M. D. in 1556. Re¬ 
turning to Bafil, he was nominated„to a medical chair in 
1560, and rofe to great celebrity both as a pradical phv- 
fician and a profeflor. In the former capacity, he obtained 
the confidence of the nobles and princes of the Upper 
Rhine; in the latter, he railed the univerfity of Bafil* to 
high reputation, as a medical fchool, by his learned leisures 
continued for fifty years. He was an expert anatomift, 
having from his youth manifefted a delight in difledions, 
which caufed him to be a frequent attendant at butchers’ 
(hops. He was alfo well verfed in botany and materia 
ntedica, and colleded a mufeum of natural hiftory. He 
died, univerfally efteemed and regretted, in 1614, at the 
age of 78. 
Plater was the author of various works, anatomical 
and medical. 1. His treatife De Partium Corporis H11- 
mani Strudura et Ufu, Lib. iii. Bafil. fol. 1583, 1603, 
borrows its deferiptions and figures chiefly from Vefalius 
and Coiter, but with various additions of his own. Hal¬ 
ler fays that he was the firft who taught that the cryftal- 
line humour of the eye has the power of a convex lens in 
bringing the rays to a focus on the retina. 2. His trea¬ 
tife De Mulierum Partibus Generationi Dicatis, was pub- 
lifhed in 1597, with the Libri Gyneciorum of Spachius. 
His other principal works are, 3. De Febribus, 1597. 
4. Praxeos Medicse, Tom. iii. 1602, 8vo. reprinted in 4to. 
this treats on the difeafes of the human body from head 
to foot, after the manner of the age, with numerous for¬ 
mula. 5. Obfervationum in Hominis AfFedibus plerifque. 
Lib. iii. 1614, 8vo. a valuable colledtion of fads and 
remarks from his own long pradfice. 6. Queftionum 
Medicarum paradoxarum et endoxarum, Centuria pofthu- 
ma, publiflied by his brother Thomas in 1625, and feve- 
ral times reprinted ; in this colledlion, thirty-eight quef- 
tions relate to phyfiology, the reft to pradfice: he fliows 
his good fenfe in rejedfing the medical obfervation of the 
planets, then common among the German phyficians, 
and in preferring a glafs of good wine as a cordial, to all 
the preparations of gold and precious ftones. 7. Some 
of his Confilia Medica are extant in the colledlion of 
Brandelius; and an “ Epiftola de Gangraena” in the 
Letters of Hildanus. 
Thomas Plater, brother of Felix, was alfo a medical 
profeflor at Bafil. He had two fons, likewife phyficians 
and profefiors, one of whom was the author of “ Obferva¬ 
tionum feledliorum Mantifla,” annexed to an edition of 
his uncle’s Obfervations in 1680. Halleri Bibl. Med. 
PLATERNIT'ZA, a town of Sclavonia, on the Save: 
ten miles fouth of Pofzega. 
PLATES, a duller of fmall iflands among the Bahamas. 
Lat. 22. 30. N. 
PLAT'FORM, f. The lketch of any thing horizontally 
delineated ; the ichnography. — When the workmen 
began to lay the platform at Chalcedon, eagles conveyed 
their lines to the other fide of the llreight. Sandys. —A 
place laid out after any model : 
No artful wildncfs to perplex the feene; 
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, 
And half the platform juft refledls the other. Pope. 
A level place before a fortification.—This happen’d on 
the platform where we watch. Shakefpeare. —A fcheme; 
a plan.—They who take in the entire platform, and lee 
the chain, which runs through the whole, and can bear 
in mind the obfervations and proofs, will difeern how 
thefe propofitions flow from them. Woodward. —I have 
made a platform of a princely garden by precept, partly 
by drawing not a model, but fome general lines of it. 
Bacon's E[f. —Their minds andaffedions were univerfally 
bent even againft all the orders and laws wherein this 
church is founded, conformable to the platform of Ge¬ 
neva. Hoolier. 
PLA'TIA 
