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ed two new motions in the fixed stars, was of his invention and fa-bric ; and when the French academicians were sent to the northto ascertain the figure of the earth, Mr. Graham was thought thefittest person in Europe to supply them with instruments: thosewho went to the south were not so well furnished. He was formany years a member of the Royal Society , to which he commu-nicated several ingenious and important discoveries; and regardedthe advancement of science more than the accumulation of wealth.He died in 1751.
GRAIN, all sorts of corn, as wheat, barley, oats, rye, &c,
Grain is also the name of a small weight, the twentieth part of* scruple in apothecaries weight, and the twenty-fourth of a penny-weight troy. See the article Weight. A grain-weight of gold-bullion is worth two-pence, and that of silver hut half a farthing.
Grain also denotes the component particle of stones and metals,the veins of wood, &c. Hence cross-grained, or against the grain,is contrary to the fibres of wood, &c.
GRAINING-BOARD, among curriers, an instrument calledalso a pummel, used to give a grain to their leather.
^ GRAIFNEY GREEN, a village of Scotland in Dumfries-shire, long famous for the clandestine marriages of young personsof fortune from England; performed according to the rites of thechurch of England , hv a blacksmith, who is said to gain near 1,0001.a-year by this encroachment on the clerical office.
GRALL.E, in ornithology, an order of birds analogous to thebruta in the class of mammalia, in the Linnsean system. SeeZoology and Ornithology .
GRA MAT, a town of France , in the department of Lot; 8miles S. W. of St. Cere and 22 j- N. N. E. of Cahors .
GRAMAYE, John Baptist, a historian and poet, born atAntwerp, and provost of Arnheim. lie travelled over Germany and Italy, but in going to Spain, was carried off by African cor-sairs to Algiers. lie returned to the Netherlands , and died atLubeck. He published, !. Africa : illustrate, libri X. in 1622;4to. 2. Diarium Algiriense: 3. Peregrinatio Belgica: a curiouswork: 4. Antiquitates Flandrix; fol. and, 5. Iiistoria Namur-censis.
GllAMINA, Grasses; one of the seven tribes or natural
families, into which all vegetables are distributed by Linntcus inhis Plulosophia Botanica. They are defined to be plants whichhave very simple leaves, a jointed stem, a husky calyx termedgluma, and a single seed. This description includes the severalsorts of corn as well as grasses. In Tournefort they constitute apart of the 15th class, termed apctali; and in Linnasus’s sexualmethod, they are mostly contained in the second order of the thirdclass, triandria digynia. This numerous and natural family of theglasses has engaged the attention and researches of several emi-nent botanists; particularly Ray, Monti, Micheli, and Linnaeus .M. Monti, in his Catalogus Stirpiuin Agri Bononiensis.Gramina achujusModi Affinia complectens, printed at Bononia in 1719, dividesthe grasses from the disposition of their flowers, as Theophrastusandlfay had done before him, into three sections or orders—Theseare, i. Grasses having flowers collected in a spike. 2. Grasseshaving their flowers collected in a panicle or loose spike. 3. Plantsthat in their habit and external appearance are allied to the grasses.This class would have been natural if the author had not improper-ly introduced sweet-rush, jnneus, and arrow-headed grass, into thethird section. Monti enumerates about 306 species of the grasses,which he reduces under Tournefort ’s genera ; to these lie addedthree new genera. Scheuchzer, in his Aristogvaphia, publishedlikewise in 1719, divides the grasses, as Monti, from the dispositionof their flowers, into the live following sections: 1. Grasses withflowers in a spike, as phalaris, anthoxanthum, and frumentum.2. Irregular grasses, as schoenantiuis and cornucopia:. 3. Grasseswith flowers growing in a simple panicle or loose spike, as reed andmillet. 4. Grasses with flowers growing in a compound panicle,or diffused spike, as oats and poa. 5. Plants by their habit nearly-allied to the grasses, as cypress-grass, scirpus, linagrostis, rush, andsceuchzeria. He has enumerated about 400 species, which he de-scribes with amazing exactness. Micheli has divided the grassesinto six sections, which contain in all 44 genera, and are arrangedfrom the situation and number of the flowers.
Gramina, the fourth order in Linnseus’s Fragments of a NaturalMethod, consisting of the numerous and natural family of thegrasses. See Botany , and Grass.
.GRAMMAR , [wH 1 *".] an art which teaches the severalkinds and relations of words, with their propriety, and their dispo-sition into sentences. Grammar is usually divided into four parts.
Etymology, which treats of the kinds of words and their deriva-tions. 2. Orthography , which treats of the characters or letters of'J'hich words are composed. 3. Syntax , which treats on the rightdispositions of words according to their agreement with, and de-pendencies on, one another in a sentence. 4. Prosody , whichbeats of the accents and quantity of syllables, and the arrangementwords so as to preserve such a regularity in the accents and'lnautity as is required in versification.
.-since words are the signs, by- which we express our ideas, theyi v, il naturally be of so many kinds in any language as are requisite" r doing this intelligibly and with proper dispatch. I he objec s° l lr ideas are beings real or imaginary. In order to discourse ojese it is requisite that they have names ; hence arises a class ° rl| id of words called nouns. It is also found necessary in or ei o! bourse intelligibly on beings, to express their properties andi. ! e bin its of the signification of their names; hence arises ano ei"id of words called very properly adnouns or adjet "
Pursuing a discourse on anv subject, frequent repetitions o ie "V"mi would often lie found to occur, and in many cases, ex, It^ ea Glttention were paid, and circumlocutions used, it wou
P r °duce ambiguity ; hence a third sort of words was m . ’
sunT'!^ aS bei " 8 il,tc " ded t0 St r d f 0 s“»""<il I'ein^
a u PP»y then* place, or express the same iciui. aa . Co,1 ceived in the mind as being in some state
"iS,.or receiving the impression of some action, p „
b site in good language to have words by means of '
Since all beingssimply, or asit became re-
states and actions might be readily expressed ; words used for thispurpose are called verbs. But as the states and actions which are ex-pressed by verbs, as well as the qualities, which are denoted byadjectives, may be very different according to the circumstancesattending them, it has been found convenient to have a class ofwords to express those circumstances ; such words from their prin-cipal use are named adverbs. The beings of which we discourse,and the state in which they exist, may on different occasions be un-der such an infinity of circumstances that it would be impossible, aswell as inconvenient, to give them different names under these va-rying circumstances, and the class of adverbs is not sufficient, oralways adapted, to express them ; lienee was wanting a class of con-nective words, which might serve to join another word to the sen-tences, and at the same time to exhibit its relation to it, so that thewhole may express the beings spoken of in the state and circum-stances conceived by the speaker ; such words have obtained theappellation of prepositions, on account of being generally placedbefore the nouns they are intended to connect. As in languagethere is frequent occasion to affirm the same thine- of differentbeings, and also different things of Urn same being,It was foundvery convenient to have a class of words to connect such beings oraffirmations, since by their means a great multitude of repetitionsare avoided: these simple connective words are denominatedconjunctions. Besides these a few other words, if we may be allow-ed to call them words, are introduced to express some emotion orfeeling of the mind ; these have been called interjections, as beinggenerally thrown in between the parts of a sentence. Thus inmost languages the parts of speech or kinds of words are eightt viz. noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition con-junction, and interjection. These diff erent kinds of words are n< tonly convenient for expressing the several ideas we wish to com-municate,