CUSTOM-HOUSE, an office established by the authority of the king, in maritime cities, or port-towns, for the receipt and management of the customs and duties of importation and exportation, imposed on merchandise, and regulated by a book of rates. And here we were about to digest, for the benefit of our readers, a fair portion of the goodly folio account of the building of the new custom-house of this metropolis; but the fabric itself, alas! has given way in almost every part of its foundation, before our humble narrative is completed! We must, therefore, hope, that under the word LONDON, no similar disappointment may prevent our recurring to this subject. CUSTOS BREVIUM, the principal clerk belonging to the court of common pleas, whose business it is to receive and keep all the writs made returnable in that court, filing every return by itself; and, at the end of each term, to receive prothonotaries of all the records of the nisi prius, called the posteas. The posteas are first brought in by the clerks of assize, of every circuit, to that prothonotary who entered the issue in the causes, in order to enter judgment; and after the prothonotary has entered the verdict and judgment into the rolls of the court, he delivers them over to the custos brevium, who binds them into a bundle. The custos brevium also makes entries of writs of covenant, and the concord upon every line; he likewise makes out exemplifications and copies of all writs and records in his office, and of all fines levied, which, being engrossed, are divided between him and the chirographer, which last keeps the writ of covenant and the note, and the former the concord and foot of the fine. The custos brevium is appointed by the king's letters patent. CUSTOS ROTULORUM, an officer who has the custody of the rolls and records of the sessions of peace, and also of the commission of the peace itself. He is usually a nobleman, and always a justice of the peace, of the quorum, in the county where he is appointed. This officer is appointed by writing under the king's sign manual, being the lord chancellor's warrant to put them in commission. He may execute his office by a deputy, and is empowered to appoint the clerk of the peace; but he is prohibited from selling his office, under divers penalties. CUSTOS SPIRITUALIUM, he that exercises the spiritual jurisdiction of a diocese, during the vacancy of any see, which, by the canon law, belongs to the dean and chapter; but at present, in England, to the archbishop of the province by, prescription CUSTOS TEMPORALIUM, the person to whom a vacant see or abbey was given by the king as supreme lord. His office was, as steward of the VOL. VII.-PART 1. goods and profits, to give an account to the escheator, who did the like to the exchequer. CU'STREL, n. s. Fr. coustillier. A bucklerbearer; a vesel for holding wine. The word is sometimes written coistrel. Every one had an archer, a demi-lance, and a custrel. Lord Herbert. CUSTRIN, a fortified town of Prussia, the capital of the New Mark of Brandenburgh, is situated in a plain at the junction of the Wartha and the Oder. The town though small has spacious suburbs, and contains 4500 inhabitants. It is encompassed by extensive morasses, which add to its strength; a fortified dike also commences at one of the suburbs, and is continued for the space of three miles by means of thirtysix bridges, across a succession of marshy ground. In the month of August, 1758, this place was bombarded and laid in ashes by the Russians, but afterwards rebuilt in a style of great regularity. It is forty-eight miles east of Berlin. CUT, v. a., v. n. & n. s. Fr. couper, couteau; Sans. kutan. West Goth. kota, κοπτω.Few words have more shades of To meaning than to cut, but in all of them division, producing, in some way or other, a solution of continuity, is expressed or implied. To cut is, to penetrate with a sharp instrument; to hew; to sculpture; to form by cutting; to divide by passing through; to pierce with an uneasy sensation; to divide packs of cards; to intersect; to castrate; to avoid a person, or pretend not to see or know him; to make way by dividing; to perform the operation of lithotomy. It obtains many additional meanings from its conjunction with down, off, out, short, up, and in. cut down is, to fell; to level with the earth by a blow from a sharp instrument; to diminish the amount of any demand; to excel; to overpower. To cut off is, to separate by cutting; to extirpate; to bring to an untimely death; to rescind; to take away; to intercept; to put an end to; to obviate; to withhold; to preclude; to interrupt; to abbreviate. To cut out is, to shape; to scheme; to adopt; to debar; to excel. To cut short is, to interrupt; to abridge. To cut up is, to divide an animal, or some article of animal food, into convenient parts; to eradicate. To cut in is a phrase used in card-playing, particularly at whist, when the cut made by the parties determines who are to be the players. To cut a caper is to dance. The meanings of the noun are also numerous. It denotes the action of a sharp instrument; the separation made by B such an instrument; an incised wound; an artíficial channel; a part cut off from the rest; a small particle; a lot made by cutting into unequal portions, a stick, straw, or bit of paper, which portions are held between the finger and thumb, while another draws the lot; a near passage, which saves distance, by cutting off an angle; an impression taken from an engraving on wood or copper; the plate on which the drawing is engraved; the dividing of a pack of cards; anciently, a fcol or cully; a gelding. Cut and long tail is a proverbial expression for all kinds of men. The participial adjective, cut, signifies prepared for use, in which case it is joined with dry; rather the worse for liquor; hurt in the feeling. Cut and come again is a trivial expression, denoting that there is an abundance. Cutter is the agent that cuts any thing; a small swift-going vessel; the incisores, or cutting teeth; an officer in the exchequer; a ruffian. Cutter off means a destroyer. Cutting is, a piece cut off; an incision; a caper, but this is obsolete; division, as of a pack of cards. Cut-purse is a thief; cut-throat a murderer; a butcher of men; the animal which is sometimes miscalled a hero. For CUTLERY, see the article. And they did beat the gold into thin plates, and cut it into wires. Exod. xxxix. 3. And they caught him, and cut off his thumbs. Jud. i. 6. Thy servants can skill to cut timber in Lebanon. 2 Chron. ii. Who cut up mallows by the bushes and juniperroots for their meat. Job xxx. 4. ye Id. Cant. Tales. fort her twinne; Now draweth cutte or that He which that hath the shortest shal beginne. Id. Prol. Cant. Tales. The cotelere dwellith in this town that made the same kuyff, And for to prove the trowith he shall be here as blyve. Id. Cunt. Tales. Either with nimble wings to cut the skies, When he them on his messages doth send, Or on his own dred presence to attend. Spenser. Hymn on Heavenly Love But that same squire to whom she was more dere Whenas he saw she should be cut in twaine, Did yield she rather should with him remaine Alive then to himself be shared dead. Id. Faerie Queene. Eftsoones her shallow ship away did slide More swift than swallow sheres the liquid skye, Withouten oare or pilot it to guide, Or winged canvas with the wind to fly : Only she turnd a pin, and by and by It cut away upon the yielding wave. Id. All Spain was first conquered by the Romans, and filled with colonies from them, which were still increased, and the native Spaniards still cut off. Id. On Ireland, It hath a number of short cuts or shreddings, which may be better called wishes than prayers. Hooker. My lady Zelmane and my daughter Mopsa may draw cuts, and the shortest cut speak first. Sidney. Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? Shakspeare. Ah, cut my lace asunder, That my great heart may have some scope to bear, He that cuts off twenty years of life, Id. Julius Cæsar. By the pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out the purity of his. Id. Winter's Tale. To have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cutpurse. Id. Send her money, knight, if thou hast her not in the end, call me cut. Id. Twelfth Night. Their clothes are after such a Pagan cut too, That, sure, they've worn out Christendom. Id. Henry VIII. It is no grace to a judge to shew quickness of conceit in cutting off evidence or counsel too short. Id. I, for my part, do not like images cut out in juniper, Id. or other garden-stuff: they be for children. The burning of the cuttings of vines, and casting them upon land, doth much good. Id. All the timber whereof was cut down in the mountains of Cilicia. Knolles. This great cut or ditch Sesostris the rich king of Egypt, and long after him Ptolemus Philadelphus, purposed to have made a great deal wider and deeper, and thereby to have let the Red Sea into the MediId. terranean. Will you then suffer these robbers, cut-throats, base people, gathered out of all the corners of Christendom, to waste your countries, spoil your cities, murder your people, and trouble all your seas? Id. If to take above fifty in the hundred be extremity, this in truth can be none other than cut-throat and abominable dealing. Carew's Survey of Cornwall. In this form, according to his description, he is set forth in the orints or cuts of martyrs by Cevallerius. Browne. There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. Cowley. Presume not on thy God, whoe'er he be He chose no other instrument than an ordinary knife, which he bought of a common cutler. Id. A man may have the stone, and it may be useful, more than indirectly and at a distance useful, to him to be cut; but yet this usefulness will not justify the most skilful surgeon in the world, by force to make him endure the pain and hazard of cutting; because he has no commission, no right, without the patient's own consent, to do so. Locke. This doctrine cuts up all government by the roots. Id. A man may as reasonably draw cuts for his tenets, and regulate his persuasion by the cast of die. Id. The ignorant took heart to enter upon this great calling, and instead of their cutting their way to it through the knowledge of the tongues, the fathers, and councils, they have taken another and a shorter South. cut. The molares, or grinders, are behind, nearest the centre of motion, because there is a greater strength or force required to chew the meat than to bite a piece; and the cutters before, that they may be ready to cut off a morsel from any solid food, to be transmitted to the grinders. Ray on the Creation. And when two hearts were joined by mutual love, The sword of justice cuts upon the knot, And severs 'em for ever. Dryden's Spanish Friar. Thus much he spoke, and more he would have said, But the stern hero turned aside his bead, And cut him short. Id. Encid. The man was cut to the heart with these consola tions. Addison. If we could imagine a whole nation to be cut-purses and robbers, would there then be kept that square dealing and equity in such a monstrous den of thieves? Bentley's Sermons. Sharp weapons, according to the force, cut into the bone many ways; which cuts are called sedes, and are reckoned among the fractures. Wiseman's Surgery. Suppose a board to be ten foot long, and one broad, one cut is reckoned so many foot. Mortimer's Husbandry. From the marrowless bones of these skeleton establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting, and of every sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he diet into some similitude of health and substance the may chip and rasp an empirical alimentary powder, to languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation. He says you and your cut-throats have a plot upon his life, and swears he had rather see his daughter in a scarlet fever than in the arms of a soldier. Sheridan. Her first thought was to cut off Juan's head; Her second, to cut only his-acquaintance; Her third, to ask him where he had been bred; Her fourth, to rally him into repentance. Byron. Don Juan, Two casks of biscuit, and a keg of butter Were all that could be thrown into the cutter. Id. CUTTING is particularly used in heraldry, where the shield is divided into two equal parts, It may compose our unnatural feuds, and cut off from right to left, parallel to the horizon, or in requent occasions of brutal rage and intemperance. Id. Every man had cut out a place for himself in his own thoughts: I could reckon up in our army two or three lord-treasurers. Id. A third desires you to observe well the toga on such a reverse, and asks you whether you can in conscience believe the sleeve of it to be of the true Roman cut. Id. So great is his natural eloquence, that he cuts down the finest orator, and destroys the best contrived argument, as soon as ever he gets himself to be heard. Id. Count Tariff. I am cut out from any thing but common acknowledgements, or common discourse Pope. the fesse way. The word is also applied to the honorable ordinaries, and even to animals and moveables, when they are divided equally the same way; so however, as that one moiety is color, the other metal. The ordinaries are said to be cut, couped, when they do not come full to the extremities of the shield. CUTTING, in painting, the laying one strong lively color over another, without any shade or softening. The cutting of colors has always a disagreeable effect. CUTTING, in surgery, denotes the operation of extracting the stone out of the bladder by the knife. See LITHOTOMY. CUT CUTTING, in the manege, is when the horse's feet interfere; or when with the shoe of one foot he beats off the skin from the pastern joints of another foot. This is more frequent in the hind feet than the fore: the cause is commonly bad shoeing. CUTTING IN WOOD is a particular kind of sculpture or engraving; the invention of which, as well as that in copper, is ascribed to a goldsmith of Florence: but it is to Albert Durer and Lucas they are both indebted for their perfection. See ENGRAVING and PRINTING. Hugo da Carpi invented a manner of cutting in wood, by means of which the prints appeared as if painted in clair-obscure. CUTTINGS, or slips, in gardening, the branches or sprigs of trees or plants, cut or slipped off to set again; which is done in any moist fine earth. The best season is from August to April; but care is to be taken, when it is done, that the sap be not too much in the top, lest the cut die before that part in the earth have root enough to support it: nor must it be too dry or scanty; the sap in the branches assisting it to take root. In providing the cuttings, such branches as have joints, knots, or burrs, are to be cut off two or three inches beneath them, and the leaves to be stripped off so far as they are set in the earth. Small top branches, of two or three years' growth, are fittest for this operation. CUTCH, an extensive province of the southwestern part of Hindostan, situated principally between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth degrees of north latitude. It is bounded to the north by a sandy desert and the province of Sindy; to the south by the gulf of Cutch; to the east by Gujrat, and to the west by Tatta, from which it is separated by the most eastern branch Its limits northward are not acof the Indus. curately defined, but it may be estimated at 110 miles in length, by seventy the average breadth. The greater part of the province is composed of woods and uncultivated plains; where a number of very fine horses are bred, superior camels, and black cattle. Other parts produce grain and cotton. It is chiefly possessed by various independent chiefs, who are often connected with the pirates of the coast: the inhabitants are principally Mahommedans. The chief towns are Boojehooje, Luck put, Bundar, and Mandavie. CUTCH GONDAVA, a district of Baloochistan, in Persia, situated at the bottom of the mountains south-east of Kelat, and about 150 miles in length, by forty-five in breadth. The soil is black and rich, growing every species of grain, together with cotton, madder, and indigo. The rains are in June, July, August, and in the spring months, during the summer, the simoom, or pestilential wind, is frequent and very destructive. The climate is otherwise good, and the soil excellent, producing a large revenue to the khan of Kelat. Great quantities of grain are exported to the sea-ports of Corachie and Sonmeany. To the northward of Cutch Gundava lies Anund Dijil. CUTCHWARA, a district in the province of Malwah, Hindostan, situated about the twentyfifth degree of north latitude, and mostly tributary to the Malwah Mahrattas. It is intersected by the Gillysinde river. The chief towns are So CUTH, signifies knowledge or skill. CUTH, or CUTHAH, a province of Assyria, on Lat. cuticula. The out- the skin. This serous, nutritious mass is more readily circuFloyer on Humours. lated into the cutaneous or remotest parts of the body. When any saline liquor is evaporated to cuticle and let cool, the salt concretes in regular figures, which argues that the particles of the salt, before they concreted, floated in the liquor at equal distances in rank Newton's Opticks. and file. Some sorts of cutaneous eruptions are occasioned by feeding much on acid unripe fruits and farinaceous substances. Arbuthnot. In each of the very fingers there are bones and gristles, and ligaments and membranes, and muscles, and tendons, and nerves and arteries, and veins and Bentley's Sermons. skin, and cuticle and nail. Where the spontaneous adhesive electric atmospheres are employed to charge plates of air, as in the membranes or cuticles, as perhaps in the shock given Galvanic pile, or probably to charge their animal the intervening non-conducting plate must be exDarwin. by the torpedo or gymnotus, it seems necessary that tremely thin. Those parts of our system which are in health excited into perpetual action, give us pain when they are not excited into action: thus, when the hands are |