SPECIAL CONFESSION
915
SPECIES
Ancient Greek and Roman Spears.
1. With a ball instead of a spike at the butt : 2. With a shaft having a loop to assist in mounting ; 3, 4, 5. Frequent forms of the point.
terms j'aciilnm and spiculum (ciKwr, aKovTiov), which probably denoted darts, we find the names of various otli- er spears which were characteristic of particular nations. Thus, the gmsum was the spear peculiar to the Gauls, and the surissa the spear peculiar to the Macedonians. This was used both to throw and as a pike. It exceeded in length all other missiles. The Thracian rontpheu, which liad a very long point, like the blade of a sword, was probably not unlike the sarissa. The iron head of the Gertnan spear, called _/>«/««/, was short and narrow, but very sharp. The Germans used it with great effect, either as a lance or a pike. They gave to each youth a framea and a shield on coming of age. 'V\\e, fidaricu or phularica was the spear of the Saguntines, and was impelled by the aid of twisted ropes. It was large and ponderous, having a head of iron a cubit in length, and a ball of lead at its other end. It sometimes carried tiaming pitch and tow. The mutin-d and tragitla were chiefly used in Gaul and Spain. The tragula was prob- ably barbed, as it required to be cut out of the wound. The aclis and cattia were much smaller missiles. A spear was erected at auctions, and when tenders were received for public offices {locatkmes). It served both to announce, by a conventional sign conspicuous at a distance, that a sale was g<iing on, and to show that it was conducted under the authority of the public func- tionaries. Hence an auction was called hasia, and an auction-room hastarium. It was also the practice to set up a spear in the court of the Centumviri (see Smith's Diet, of Class. Antiq. s. v. " Hasta"').
Special Confession, a confession of sin made by a particidar person to a particular priest, in contradis- tinction to the general confession made by a congrega- tion repeating a form of public confession after the priest or minister.
Special Intention. 1. The celebration of the Christian sacrifice with the object of gaining some par- ticular gift or grace. 2. The act of receiving the hoi}' commiuiion with the object of obtaining some particu- lar grace.
Special Psalms, an Anglican teim to designate the fact that " proper psalms on certain days" are ap- pointed to be used in the Matins and Even-song of the Church of England. These days are Christmas-day, Ash-\Vednes(iay, (iood-Friday, Easter-day, Ascension- day, and Whit- Sunday .—Lee, Gloss, of Liturfj, Ttrms, s. v.
Specierum Collatio, the name of a tax pro- vided for in the Theodosutn Code. It was so called be- cause this tribute was commonly paid in upecie — as in corn, wine, oil, iron, brass, etc. — for the emperor's ser-
vice. Being the ordinary standing tax of the empire, it is lu) less fretjuently styled iitdictio canoiiicu, in ojipo- sition to the siiperindicta et extruordinariu, that is, such taxes as were levied ujjon extraordinary occasions. See Bingham, Christ. Antiq. bk. v, ch. iii, § 3.
Species, Ouigin of. The immutability of species — that is, the law that no really distinct kind of plant or animal is ca|ial)le, by any process, whether natural or artificial, of being transformed into another, beyond the non-essential limits of what are technically denominated " varieties" — is no less a doctrine of Scripture (where it a])pears to be contained in the emphatic expression ID'i'Ilp, "after its kind," constantly appended to the statement of each successive creative act in the first chapter of Genesis) than a conclusion of sound induc- tive science.
Each animal and plant has an ancestry of its own ; and relationship by descent is admittedly that which constitutes identity of species — that is to say, all the animals of the world (and the same may be said of plants) which have descended (rom the same pair of ancestors belong to the same species. That there are many apparently different species of animals now in ex- istence is obvious. But the question has been mooted whether this distinction of species is a reality in nature, or whether all animals may not be lineally descended from one, or, at all events, a few original stocks. Geol- ogy teaches us that no animals of a higher order than zoophytes, moUusks, and crustaceans were inhabitants of our globe up to the close of the Silurian »ra; that the fish then, for the first time, made its appearance, and afterwards the reptile, in the Carboniferous tera, and then the mammal, at a later period, in the Tertiary. Were the different species of zoophytes, molhisks, and crustaceans of the Silurian ages and those of the suc- ceeding and present seras all of them the offspring of one yjair, or of different pairs of ancestors, whose descend- ants had become thus varied by the operation of time and the changed conditions of life? Again, were the various species of fishes, reptiles, and mammals descend- ants from their severally respective pairs of ancestors, or were they all of them lineal descendants of the previ- ously existing inferior orders of animals of the Silurian and its preceding aeras, and all thus related in blood to each other? If the various species had each their own separate first parents and lineage, then each of those an- cestors must have been produced by a separate act of ■ creative power, or, as it has been termed, by a separate creative fiat, similar to that which kindleil the first spark of life in the first living creature that stirred within the precincts of our planet; and thus the Crea- tor must have been ever present with his work, renew- ing it with life in the various species of animals and plants with which it has from the begiiniing been sup- plied. On the other hand, philosophers have been found to insist that all the animals (and plants also) in the world, including man himself, have descended from one simple organism, and the operation of the preordained laws of nature, without the interference of the Deity.