is generally considered as the separation of the soul from the body; in which sense it stands opposed to life, which consists in the union thereof.

Physicians usually define death by a total stoppage of the circulation of the blood, and a cessation of the animal and vital functions consequent thereon; as respiration, fenation, &c.

As animal body, by the actions inseparable from life, undergoes a continual change. Its smallest fibres become rigid; its minute vessels grow into solid fibres no longer pervious to the fluids; its greater vessels grow hard and narrow; and every thing becomes contracted, cloed, and bound up; whence the dryness, immobility, and extenuation, observed in old age. By such means the offices of the minuter vessels are destroyed; the humours stagnate, harden, and at length coalesce with the solids. Thus are the subtlest fluids in the body intercepted and lost, the concoction weakened, and the reparation prevented; only the coarser juices continue to run slowly through the greater vessels, to the preservation of life, after the animal functions are destroyed. At length, in the process of these changes, death itself becomes inevitable, as the necessary consequence of life. But it is rare that life is thus long protracted, or that death succeeds merely from the decays and impairments of old age. Diseases, a long and horrid train, cut the work short.

The signs of death are in many cases very uncertain. If we consult what Winiflow or Bruchier have said on this subject, we shall be convinced, that between life and death the shade is so very undistinguishable, that even all the powers of art can scarcely determine where the one ends and the other begins. The colour of the visage, the warmth of the body, and suppleness of the joints, are but uncertain signs of life still subsisting; while, on the contrary, the paleness of the complexion, the coldness of the body, the stiffness of the extremities, the cessation of all motion, and the total insensibility of the parts, are but uncertain marks of death begun. In the same manner also, with regard to the pulse and breathing; these motions are so often kept under, that it is impossible to perceive them. By bringing a looking-glass near to the mouth of the person supposed to be dead, people often expect to find whether he breathes or not. But this is a very uncertain experiment; the glass is frequently filled by the vapour of the dead man's body; and often the person is still alive, though the glass is no way tarnished. In the same manner, neither burning nor scarifying, neither noises in the ears nor pungent spirits applied to the nostrils, give certain signs of the discontinuance of life; and there are many instances of persons who have endured them all, and afterwards recovered without any external assistance, to the astonishment of the spectators. This ought to be a caution against hasty burials, especially in cases of sudden death, drowning, &c.

in Law. In law, there is a natural death and civil death: natural, where nature itself expires; civil, where a person is not actually dead, but adjudged so by law. Thus, if any person, for whose life an estate is granted, remains beyond sea, or is otherwise absent, seven years, and no proof made of his being alive, he shall be accounted naturally dead.

Brothers of DEATH, a denomination usually given to the religious of the order of St Paul, the first hermit. They are called Brothers of death, fratres à morte, on account of the figure of a death's head which they were always to have with them, in order to keep perpetually before them the thoughts of death. This order, by its constitutions made in 1620, does not seem to have been established long before Pope Paul V. Louis XIII. in 1621, permitted them to settle in France. The order was probably suppressed by Pope Urban VIII.

Law of DEATH-Bed. See Law Index.

DEATH-Watch, in Natural History, a little insect famous for a ticking noise, like the beat of a watch, which the vulgar have long taken for a preface of death in the family where it is heard: whence it is also called pediculus fatidicus, mortifaga, pulsatorius, &c.

There are two kinds of death-watches. Of the first we have a good account in the Phil. Trans. by Mr Allen. It is a small beetle, 5-16ths of an inch long, of a dark brown colour, spotted; having pellucid wings under under the vagina, a large cap or helmet on the head, and two antennae proceeding from beneath the eyes, and doing the office of proboscides. The part it beats withal, he observed, was the extreme edge of the face, which he chooses to call the upper-lip, the mouth being protracted by this bony part, and lying underneath out of view.

This account is confirmed by Dr Derham; with this difference, that instead of ticking with the upper lip, he observed the insect to draw back its mouth, and beat with its forehead. That author had two death-watches, a male and a female, which he kept alive in a box several months; and could bring one of them to beat whenever he pleased, by imitating its beating. By this ticking noise he could frequently invite the male to get up upon the other in the way of coition. When the male found he got up in vain, he would get off again, beat very eagerly, and then up again: Whence the ingenious author concludes those pulsations to be the way whereby these insects woo one another, and find out and invite each other to copulation.

The second kind of death-watch is an insect in appearance quite different from the first. The former only beats seven or eight strokes at a time, and quicker: the latter will beat some hours together without intermission; and his strokes are more leisurely, and like the beat of a watch. This latter is a small grayish insect, much like a louse when viewed with the naked eye.

It is very common in all parts of the house in the summer-months: it is very nimble in running to shelter, and fly of beating when disturbed; but will beat very freely before you, and also answer the beating, if you can view it without giving it disturbance, or shaking the place where it lies, &c. The author cannot say whether they beat in any other thing, but he never heard their noise except in or near paper. As to their noise, the same person is in doubt whether it be made by their heads, or rather fronts, against the paper; or whether it be not made after some such manner as grasshoppers and crickets make their noise. He inclines to the former opinion. The reason of his doubt is, that he observed the animal's body to shake and give a jerk at every beat, but could scarce perceive any part of its body to touch the paper. But its body is so small and near the paper, and its motion in ticking so quick, that he thinks it might be, yet he not perceive it. The ticking, as in the other, he judges to be a wooing act: as having observed another, after much beating, come and make offers to the beating insect, who, after some offers, left off beating, and got upon the back of the other. When they were joined, he left off again; and they continued some hours joined tail to tail, like dog and bitch in coition. Whether this insect changes its shape, and becomes another animal or not, he cannot say; though he has some cause to suspect that it becomes a sort of fly. It is at first a minute white egg, much smaller than the nits of lice; though the insect is near as big as a louse. In March it is hatched, and creeps about with its shell on. When it first leaves its shell, it is even smaller than its egg; though that be scarcely discernible without a microscope. In this state it is perfectly like the mites in cheese. From the mite state they grow gradually to their mature perfect state. When they become like the old ones, they are at first very small, but run about much more swiftly than before.