board, or court of justice, held in the compting-house of the king's household, composed of the lord steward, and officers under him, who sit daily. To this court is committed the charge and oversight of the king's household in matters of justice and government, with a power to correct all offenders, and to maintain the peace of the verge, or jurisdiction of the court royal: which is every way about two hundred yards from the last gate of the palace where his majesty resides.

It takes its name, board of green cloth, from a green cloth spread over the board where they sit.

Without a warrant first obtained from this court, none of the king's servants can be arrested for debt.

Clerks of the Green Cloth, are two officers of the board of green-cloth, who appoint the diet of the king and his household; and keep all records, ledgers and papers relating thereto; make up bills, parcels and debentures for salaries, and provisions and necessaries for the officers of the pantry, buttery, cellar, &c. They They also wait upon foreign princes when entertain- ed by his majesty.

**Green Finch**, in ornithology, the English name of the greenish fringilla, with the wings and tail variega- ted with yellow. See Fringilla.

**Green House**, or conservatory, a house in a gar- den contrived for sheltering and preserving the most tender and curious exotic plants, which, in our climate, will not bear to be exposed to the open air during the winter season. These are generally large and beautiful structures, equally ornamental and useful.

**Greenland**, or West Greenland, extends from the meridian of London to 50° W. long, and from 60° to 80° N. lat.

The Danes have some colonies here, and pretend to the property of the whole. However, the Dutch make very free with the fishery on this coast, notwithstanding the representations and even menaces of the Danes on that head.

**Greenwich**, a town of Kent, situated on the south- ern shore of the Thames, five miles east of London; remarkable for its royal and magnificent hospital, erec- ted for decayed or disabled seamen who have served their country, and for its palace and most delightful park.

On the top of a steep hill in the park, stands the royal observatory, built by Charles II. and furnished with all manner of instruments for astronomical observa- tions, and a deep dry well for observing the stars by day.

**Gregarious**, among zoologists, a term applied to such animals as do not live solitary, but in herds, flocks, or coves.

**Gregorian Calendar**, that which shows the new and full moon, with the time of Easter, and the move- able feasts depending thereon, by means of epacts, dis- posed through the several months of the Gregorian year. See Astronomy, p. 490.

**Gregorian Year**. See Astronomy, p. 490.

**Grenoble**, a city of France, capital of Dauphiny, forty-five miles south-east of Lyons, and thirty-six miles south-west of Chambery: E. long. 5° 28', and N. lat. 45° 12'.

**Gretnock**, or Greenock, a port-town of Scotland, near the mouth of the river Clyde; being the principal station for the herring-fishery.

**Grewia**, in botany, a genus of the gynandra polyan- dra clas. The calyx consists of five leaves; the pe- tals are five; at the base of each petal there is a necta- riferous scale; and the berry has four cells. There are two species, none of them natives of Britain.

**Grey**, or Gray, a mixed colour partaking of the two extremes, black and white.

**Griffon**, in heraldry, an imaginary animal, feigned by the ancients to be half eagle and half lion; by this form they intended to give an idea of strength and swiftness joined together, with an extraordinary vigi- lance in guarding the things intrusted to its care. Thus the heathen naturalists persuaded the ignorant, that gold mines were guarded by these creatures with incredible watchfulness and resolution.

**Grimerger**, a city of Germany, in the circle of the Lower Rhine, and earldom of Tiers: E. long. 6° 35', N. lat. 49° 40'.

**Grimsby**, a borough and port-town of Lincolnshire, situated at the mouth of the Humber: E. long. 4° N. lat. 53° 34'. It sends two members to parliament.

**Grinding**, the reducing hard substances to fine pow- ders.

*Method of Grinding optic glasses.* Mr Huygens di- rects, in general, to make the breadth of the concave tool, plate, dish, or form, in which an object-glass must be ground, almost three times the breadth of the glass. Though in another place he speaks of grinding a glass whose focal distance was 200 feet, and breadth 8½ inches, in a plate only fifteen inches broad. But for eye-glasses, and others of lesser spheres, the tools must be broader in proportion to the breadth of these glasses, to afford room enough for the motion of the hand in polishing. Mr Huygens made his tools of copper, or of cast brass, which, for fear they should change their figure by bending, can hardly be cast too thick: however, he found by experience, that a tool fourteen inches broad, and half an inch thick, was strong enough for the forming glasses to a sphere of thirty-five feet diameter; when the tool was strongly cemented upon a cylindrical stone an inch thick, with hard cement made of pitch and ashes.

In order to make moulds for casting such tools as are pretty much concave, he directs, that wooden patterns should be turned in a lathe, a little thicker and broader than the tools themselves; but for tools that belong to spheres above twenty or thirty feet diameter, he says it is sufficient to make use of flat boards turned circular to the breadth and thickness required. When the plates are cast, they must be turned in a lathe ex- actly to the concavity required; and for this purpose it is requisite to make a couple of brass gages in the man- ner following, according to the directions of Mr Mo- lyneux.

Take a wooden pole, a little longer than the radius of the spherical surface of the glass to be formed; and through the ends of it strike two small steel points, at a distance from each other equal to the radius of the sphere intended; and by one of the points hang up the pole against a wall, so that this upper point may have a circular motion in a hole or socket made of brass or iron, fixed firmly to the wall. Then take two equal plates of brass or copper, well hammered and smooth- ed, whose length is somewhat more than the breadth of the tool of cast brass, whose thickness may be about a tenth or a twelfth of an inch, and whose breadth may be two or three inches. Then having fastened these plates flat against the wall in a horizontal position, with the moveable point in the pole, strike a true arch upon each of them. Then file away the brass on one side exactly to the arch struck, so as to make one of the brass edges convex, and the other concave; and to make the arches correspond more exactly, fix one of the plates flat upon a table, and grind the other against it with emery. These are the gages to be made use of in turning the brass tools exactly to the sphere re- quired.