Dibdin, Charles

an English song-writer and musical composer, в. 1745. Among his many operas and operettas may be mentioned the Shepherd's Artifice. The Padlock, and The Quaker, and the well-known musical farce of the Waterman, which is still a favorite on the stage. It is, however, as a writer of nautical and patriotic songs that D.'s reputation will endure. He is believed to have written altogether nearly 1,400 songs and ballads, some of which, as Tom Bowling, The Anchor's Weighed, Poor Jack, ., will transmit his name to posterity. So potent an influence had his sea-songs on the British public, and so powerfully did they contribute to the prestige of the naval service of that country during the French war, that the govt. conferred upon him an annuity of $1,000. D. in 1814. - His son THOMAS, author of more than 1,000 songs and musical dramas, D. 1841. Dib ranch i at a, Dibran'chiates, n. pl. [Gr. di for dis, twice, and branchia, gills of a fish.] ( Zool.) An order of cephalopods, which includes those with two gills, and which are also characterized by having three distinct hearts; an apparatus for secreting and emitting an inky fluid; cephalic arms, never exceeding ten in number, solid, and supporting acetabulæ; and, in short, all the chief characteristics which are usually ascribed to the entire cla of Cephalopods. This order embraces the families Organ an tidæ and Octopodidæ, which have 8 arms, and fixed eyes; Teuthida, Belemuitida, Sepiadæ, and Spirulida, which have 8 arms and 2 elongated tentacles, with expanded ends, and movable eyes.