among metaphysicians and logicians, denotes a number of beings which agree in certain general properties common to them all: so that a genus is nothing else but an abstract idea, expressed by some general name or term. See Logic and Metaphysics.

Genus, is also used for a character or manner applicable to every thing of a certain nature or coadition; in which sense it serves to make capital divisions in divers sciences, as medicine, natural history, &c.

rhetoric. Authors distinguish the art of rhetoric, as also orations or discourses produced thereby, into three genera or kinds, demonstrative, deliberative, and judiciary. To the demonstrative kind belong panegyrics, genethliacons, epithalamiums, funeral harangues, &c. To the deliberative kind belong persuasions, diffusions, commendations, &c. To the judiciary kind belong defences and accusations.

medicine. See Medicine, under the Nomenclature.

natural history, a subdivision of any class or order of natural beings, whether of the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms, all agreeing in certain common characters. See Botany and Zoology.

music, by the ancients called genus melodiae, is a certain manner of dividing and subdividing the principles of melody; that is, the consonant and dissonant intervals, into their concinnous parts.

The moderns conferring the octave as the most perfect of intervals, and that whereon all the concords depend, in the present theory of music, the division of that interval is considered as containing the true division of the whole scale.

But the ancients went to work somewhat differently: the diatessaron, or fourth, was the least interval which they admitted as concord; and therefore they sought first how that might be most conveniently divided; from whence they constituted the diapente and diapason.

The diatessaron being thus, as it were, the root and foundation of the scale, what they called the genera, or kinds, arose from its various divisions; and hence they defined the genus modulandi to be the manner of dividing the tetrachord and disposing its four sounds as to succession.

The genera of music were three, the enharmonic, chromatic, and diatonic. The two first were variously subdivided: and even the last, tho' that is commonly reckoned to be without any species, yet different authors have proposed different divisions under that name, without giving any particular names to the species as was done to the other two.

For the characters, &c. of these several genera, see Enharmonic, Chromatic, and Diatonic.