TISRI

antiquity. According to the received story, thoy were introduced into Rome by Tiro, the freedman and favourite of Cicero: he is supposed to have imported tlie art from Greece. MSS., written entirely in what are called the Tironian notes, are not unfrequently of the date of the 7th century and downwards; and they are still common in marginal notes. Kopp ( Tachygraph i a Veterum Exposit a, p. 1817.) thinks that they are called from the word tiro, a learner. His second volume contains a dictionary of these notes, which he appears to have succeeded in deciphering. Some have thought that valuable lost cla ics may be recovered through this key; but as yet these hopes have been nugatory. (See Ed. Rev. vol.xlviii. p. 357. .) TI'SRI. The first Hebrew month of the civil year, and the seventh of the ecclesiastical year. It corresponds to part of September and October. TI'SSUE, in Plants, the thin membranous organization of which every part is composed, microscopical in size, and often appearing to the naked eye homogeneous, although it consists of a great variety of forms closely compacted. Vegetable anatomists regard its primitive form as spheroidal, and that the tubes and spiral ve els are mere extensions of that form. Ti ue appears to be in all plants of the same nature originally, but it soon becomes altered by the deposition of various secretions upon its sides. TI'TAN. In Grecian Mythology, according to the more modern account, the eldest son of Uranus andGaia, who relinquished the sovereignty of gods and men to his younger brother Saturn, the latter undertaking to destroy all his children, so that the monarchy might revert to those of Titan. He afterwards recovered the sovereignty from Saturn; but Jupiter, the son of the latter, vanquished him, and restored it to his father. This, however, is a tale altogether unknown to the original mythologists. According to them, the Titans were many in number; children of Uranus and Gaia. ^Hesiod makes them six. The children of the Titans', Atlas for example, retained the same appellation. The war of these Titans with Jupiter was the subject of many different and contradictory legends. Its «cene was laid in The aly; by Homer on the mountains Olympus, Pelion, and O a. By some writers Titan is identified with Hyper i on; but this point is involved in great obscurity. TITANITE. Native oxide of titanium. TITA'NIUM. A rare metal, discovered by Gregor in a mineral from Cornwall called nie nucha nite. Its characters were first ascertained by Klaproth, who gave it the above name. In the year 1822, Dr. Wollaston ascertained that the minute copper-coloured crystals occasionally found in the slag of the iron smelting furnaces at Merthyr and elsewhere were pure titanium; and it is to him that we are indebted for a precise account of its properties. In this state it has a copper colour, is extremely infusible, and of a specific gravity of 58; it is so hard as to scratch not only gla , but crystal. It resists the action of air and acids, but is oxidized by the action of nitre at a red heat. Titanium appears susceptible of two degrees of oxidize ment. The protoxide of titanium is blue or purple, and appears to constitute the mineral called anatase. The peroxide, or titanic acid, exists nearly pure in titanite, or rutilite, and is combined with the oxides of iron and manganese in me nach a nite. The equivalent of titanium has not been very satisfactorily ascertained, but it is probably about 24 upon the hydrogen scale. TITHES. In Ecclesiastical Law, the tenth part of the produce of the land, which, in this and other Christian countries, was anciently set apart for the endowment of the church. By the Mosaical law, the Levites, by whom the public worship of the Jewish state was performed, were supported, not as the other tribes, by the allotment of a certain district of Canaan, but by the appointment of divers cities in various parts of the country for their abode, and the payment of tithes from the whole community.. This ordinance has frequently been appealed to under the Christian dispensation, as establishing the divine right of the clergy to the receipt of tithes for ever; but this ground of claim has been generally abandoned in modern times; nor does the practice of the early church, at its first establishment in connection with the state, give any reason to suppose that such an idea was then entertained. Nor, in this country, do the people and their rulers appear, upon their conversion, to have felt themselves under the obligation of any strict payment of tithes. It was first enjoined, apparently, in certain ecclesiastical canons, in the year 750; and the first civil decree upon the subject is discovered in the laws of Offa, king of Mercia, in 794. In France, a similar law was enforced by Charlemagne in 778, and from that time the payment has been continued without interruption to modern times. Of tithes there are three kinds: — 1. Predial, of the vegetable productions of the land, as corn, hay, .; 2d, Mixed, as of wool, pigs, ., which, though natural products, are nurtured and preserved by the care of man; 3rd, Fersonal,as of manual occupations, trades, fisheries, and the like. Another division of tithes is into great and small, 1241 TITHES.. or parsonage and vicarage tithes: of these the former are chiefly corn? hay, and wood; the latter are predial tithes of other kinds, together with mixed and personal tithes. The great tithes belong to the rector; whereas only the small tithes are due to the vicar. By the original law, all the land of the country was tithable, excepting the property of the crown, and of the church itself. But when at the Reformation the monasteries were di olved, and their estates granted for the most part to laymen, these lands would have become tithable again, but for a particular statute which was enacted for the advantage of the new po e ors. It was also allowable, up to the 13 Eliz., to effect compositions between the clergy and owners of the land, by which the parish was discharged of these payments for ever, in consideration of lands made over to the parson in exchange. This practice was, however, restrained by the statute above referred to, which limited all such compositions to a period of three lives or twenty-one years. From these causes, however, it is that we find a great deal of land in the hands of lay proprietors not subject to this charge. The monasteries, however, held one third of the benefices of the kingdom, from all of which they received tithes, and appointed members of their own body, as their vicars or curates, to discharge the ordinary functions of ministers in them. To these they either gave fixed stipends, or allotted the small tithes, taking, as their own share, the great or rectorial. This is called appropriation of tithes; but when these benefices fell into the hands of laymen, the same practice was continued, and is distinguished by the title of impropriation. Tithes are either due de jure or by custom: to the latter cla belong all perscmal tithes. The subtraction of tithes from a parson, whether a clergyman or lay impropriator {see Impropriation), or from a vicar, is cognizable in the ecclesiastical courts. But these courts cannot try the right to tithes, except between spiritual persons; consequently, if the defendant pleads any matter involving a question of right, it must be tried by a jury. Suits for tithes are generally instituted in the Court of Exchequer. By the 53 G. 3. c. 127. justices of the peace have jurisdiction for the recovery of small tithes to the amount of lOZ. Lands and their occupiers may be discharged from the payment of tithes, either in part or totally, by a real composition, or by custom or prescription. The first is where an agreement is made between the owner and the parson or vicar, with consent of the ordinary and patron, that some land, or other real recompence, be given in satisfaction of tithes. By 13 Eliz. c. 10., as we have seen, no real composition, made since that statute, is good for any longer time than three lives or twenty-one years. Compositions between a tithe-owner and parishioner cease on the death of the incumbent with whom they were made. A discharge by custom or prescription is either, I. De modo dec i mandi, where a modus, or particular manner of tithing, is shown to exist by custom, which must have existed immemorially; /. e. is not good, if evidence be shown of its non-existence at any time since the reign of Richard I. Or, 2. De non dec i man do, where a total exemption from tithes is shown. Such is a general view of the law of tithe previous to the great changes introduced hy the Tithe Commutation Act, G & 7 W. 4. c. 71.; the object of which was to convert a tax, imposed on the gro produce of the soil, and varying annually in amount as well as money value along with it, into a rent-charge, perpetual as to the amount, but varying according to the money value. By this act the money value of the tithes in each parish was to be calculated according to the average of the seven years ending at Christmas, 1835, minus the expences of collecting, .; but without deduction on account of parochial or county rates, . The commi ioners appointed for that purpose under the act were then to award that sum (subject to some unimportant allowances), as the amount of the rent-charge to be paid in respect of the tithes. This rent-charge was to be apportioned among the lands of the parish, having regard to their average tithable produce and productive quality. The rent-charge, being thus valued in money, was to be taken as the price of such a quantity of wheat, barley, and oats as it would have purchased (each grain in equal quantities), according to the average price at the period of the confirmation of the apportionment. That quantity of grain was therefore to remain for ever as the annual charge upon the parish. In order to regulate the money amount of the tithes, the money payment each year was to be equal to the price of that quantity at the average of the seven years immediately preceding, to be ascertained by an advertisement of the comptroller of com returns, published in the month of January every year. The rent-charge to be paid by the occupiers of the land on which it is respectively apportioned. It will be apparent, from this brief outline of the provisions of the act, that a very great benefit was conferred by it, for all immediate purposes, upon the tithe-owner, Page 1255