republic, republick, republique

[Fr. république, from Lat. res public a a commonwealth: res an affair, and public a, fem. sing. of public us =public (q. v.); Sp. republic a; Ital.repub lica, repubblica.] *1. The common or public weal or good. "The world is full of vanity; and fond fools Promise themselves a name from building churches, Or anything that tends to the republic ." Randolph: Muses' Looking Gla , iii. 1. 2. A commonwealth; a form of political constitution in which the supreme power is vested, not in an hereditary ruler, but in the hands either of certain privileged members of the community or of the whole community. Theoretically, the purest and most perfect form of a republic is a state in which all the members of the community meet in public a embly to enact laws, and transact all ever, practicable only in very small states, and has, therefore, given way in all modern republics to the representative system that is, one in which the supreme power is vested in rulers chosen periodically by and from the whole body of the people, or by their representatives a embled in a congre or national a embly, as in the present French other national busine . Such a system how IMG:content-0479.png:[blocks in formation] Gray, and Wagler: In 18st appeared the ninth and last volume of the Erpéto logie Générale of Duméril and Bibron, having been twenty years in progre . In 1863, in his Hunter i an Lectures, Huxley adopted the term Sauroids for that division of the Vertebrates which he afterward called Sauropsida. He divides the Reptilia ( Anat . Vert . , p. 196) into the following orders: Chelonia, Plesiosaur i a, Lacer til i a, Ophidia. Ichthyosauri a, Crocodilia, Dicynodont i a, Ornithoscelida, and Pterosaur i a. Owen makes reptiles proper the highest of the five subcla es into which he finally divided his Hæmatocrya with nine orders. Ichthyopterygia (extinct), Sauropterygia (extinct), Anomodontia (extinct), Chelonia, Lacer til i a (with the extinct Mosasaurus), Ophidia, Crocodilia (with the extinct Teleosaur us and Strep so spondyl us), Dinosaur i a (extinct), and Pterosaur i a (extinct). Prof. Mivart ( Encyc . Brit . (ed. 9th), xx. 442-45) divides the Reptilia into the following ten orders: Ichthyopterygia (extinct), Anomodontia (extinct), Dinosaur i a (extinct), Ornithosaur i a (extinct), Croco dilia, Rhynchocephalia, Sauropterygia, Lacer til i a, Ophidia, and Chelonia. 2. Palæont.: The first appearance of reptiles is believed to be indicated by remains of a marine Saurian ( Eosaurus a cadi an us ) of Carboniferous age. Prot eros a urus is found in the Permian. In Mesozoic times the Reptilian type appears in such variety and in such a high state of development that this era has been distinguished as the Reptil ian age. In the Trias large marine Saurians and Dinosaurs are met with; the more gigantic forms were developed in the Jura ic period; and the cla attained its highest culmination in the Chalk. Sir R. Owen's British Fo il Reptiles is the best authority on the subject with which it deals. boil, boy; pout, jowl; cat, çell, chorus,