in Surgery, is a cord, band, or string, or the binding any part of the body with a cord, band, fillet, &c. whether of leather, linen, or any other matter. See Surgery.

Ligature is also used to signify a kind of bandage or fillet, tied round the neck, arm, leg, or other part of the bodies of men or beasts, to divert or drive off some disease, accident, &c.

the Italian music, signifies a tying or binding together of notes. Hence syncopes are often called ligatures, because they are made by the ligature of many notes. There is another sort of ligatures for breves, when ering down, or when driven in contact with the vessel it might be going to relieve.

"The boat thus described had the plug out, and was filled with water until it ran over the gunwale, when a crew of four, with myself, tried it in every way, and found, from the buoyant property of the casks, it kept the boat so much above the water's edge, that it was rowed with the greatest ease, and was capable of performing any service required."

Mr J. Boyce, in 1814, obtained a medal for his life-boat and safety buoy, consisting of hollow cylinders made of canvass painted and varnished, and connected with each other. It was tried on a river, and carried a man with safety (vol. xxxii. p. 177); but surely it could not be trusted among breakers on a lee shore. In 1818, Mr Gabriel Bray obtained a silver medal for his invention of a boat filled with air boxes under the seats and along the sides. (Vol. xxxv. p. 172.)

Captain Manby's proposal for throwing ropes from ship to ship in cases of accidents, may easily be understood from the methods which he employs for saving lives in shipwrecks. Mr Thomas Cook's life-buoy is related to the same class of inventions; its object is to preserve the life of a person falling overboard in the night, by means of a floating light; and it obtained him a gold medal from the Society of Arts in 1818. (Transactions, xxxvi. p. 121.) He observes that a ship may often have to run half a mile before she can get about and lower a boat, so that it becomes highly desirable to afford a temporary support to the sufferer. The machine consists of two casks, with a pillar between them, carrying a composition of potfire, to be lighted by a lock when the accident happens, and to serve as a rendezvous to the man and the boat. He found that it might be lighted and let down into the water in the short time of five seconds, being always kept suspended in a proper manner between the cabin windows at the stern of the ship. Mr Miller's safety poles for skaters, and Mr Prior's mode of preventing accidents in descending mines, are mentioned in the Transactions of the Society of Arts (vols. xxxii. and xxxvi.); but they do not require more particular notice on the present occasion.

A sketch of the expedients which have been recommended for the preservation of mariners, published in a work entitled Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea (vol. iii. p. 459, Edinb. 1822, 8vo), contains a few further historical details relating to some of the inventions which have been described.

(L. L.)

there are many of these on different lines, or on different spaces, to be sung to one syllable.