BOATING, a kind of punishment in use among the ancient Persians for capital offenders. The manner of boating was thus: the person condemned to it being laid on his back in a boat, and having his hands stretched out, and tied fast on each side of it, had another boat put over him, his head being left out thro' a place fit for it. In this posture they fed him, till the worms, which were bred in the excrements he voided as he thus lay, eat out his bowels, and so caused his death, which was usually twenty days in effecting, the criminal lying all this while in most exquisite torments.