a sign or mark impressed upon anything, whether by nature or art. Such is the general signification of the word; but in the plural number it has been used, in a particular sense, to denote those external marks by which physiognomists and other dabblers in the occult sciences pretend to discover the nature and internal qualities of every thing on which they are found. According to Lavater, every corporeal object is characterized by signatures peculiar to itself.

The doctrine of signatures, like alchemy and astrology, was very prevalent during the 15th and 16th centuries; and was considered as one of the occult sciences which conferred no small degree of honour on their respective professors. Some of these philosophers, as they thought fit to style themselves, maintained that plants, minerals, and animals, but particularly plants, had signatures impressed on them by the hand of nature, indicating to the adept the therapeutic uses to which they might be applied. Others, such as the mystic theosophists and chemists of that day, proceeded much farther in absurdity, maintaining that every substance in nature had either external signatures immediately discernible, or internal signatures, which, when brought into view by fire or menstrua, denoted its connection with some Sidereal or celestial archetype. Of the doctrine of signatures, as it relates merely to the therapeutic uses of plants and minerals, traces are to be found in the works of some of the greatest authors of antiquity; but the celestial signatures, we believe, were discovered only by the moonlight of the monkish ages. Pliny informs us * & High No. 34. that the marble called ophites, from its being spotted like a serpent, was discovered by those spots to be a sovereign remedy for the bite of that animal; and that the colour of the haemates or blood-stone intimated that it was fit to be employed to stop an hemorrhagy; but we do not recollect his attributing the virtues of these minerals to a sidereal or celestial influence.

a signing of a person's name at the bottom of an act or deed written by his own hand.

in Printing, is a letter put at the bottom of the first page at least, in each sheet, as a direction to the binder in folding, gathering, and collating them. The signatures consist of the capital letters of the alphabet, which change in every sheet; if there be more sheets than letters in the alphabet, to the capital letter is added a small one of the same form, as Aa, Bb; which are repeated as often as necessary. In large volumes it is easy to distinguish the number of alphabets, after the first three or four, by placing a figure before the signature, as 5 B, 6 B, &c.