[1] Two forms of the verb are used, "deduce" and "deduct"; originally
synonymous, they are now distinguished, "deduce" being confined to
arguments, "deduct" to quantities.
DEE, JOHN (1527-1608), English mathematician and astrologer, was born on
the 13th of July 1527, in London, where his father was, according to
Wood, a wealthy vintner. In 1542 he was sent to St John's College,
Cambridge. After five years spent in mathematical and astronomical
studies, he went to Holland, in order to visit several eminent
continental mathematicians. Having remained abroad nearly a year, he
returned to Cambridge, and was elected a fellow of Trinity College, then
first erected by King Henry VIII. In 1548 he took the degree of master
of arts; but in the same year he found it necessary to leave England on
account of the suspicions entertained of his being a conjurer; these
were first excited by a piece of machinery, which, in the _Pax_ of
Aristophanes, he exhibited to the university, representing the
scarabaeus flying up to Jupiter, with a man and a basket of victuals on
its back. He went first to the university of Louvain, where he resided
about two years, and then to the college of Rheims, where he had
extraordinary success in his public lectures on Euclid's _Elements_. On
his return to England in 1551 King Edward assigned him a pension of 100
crowns, which he afterwards exchanged for the rectory of
Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire. Soon after the accession of Mary he
was accused of using enchantments against the queen's life; but after a
tedious confinement he obtained his liberty in 1555, by an order of
council.
When Elizabeth ascended the throne, Dee was asked by Lord Dudley to name
a propitious day for the coronation. On this occasion he was introduced
to the queen, who took lessons in the mystical interpretation of his
writings, and made him great promises, which, however, were never
fulfilled. In 1564 he again visited the continent, in order to present
his _Monas hieroglyphica_ to the emperor Maximilian, to whom he had
dedicated it. He returned to England in the same year; but in 1571 he
was in Lorraine, whither two physicians were sent by the queen to his
relief in a dangerous illness. Returning to his home at Mortlake, in
Surrey, he continued his studies, and made a collection of curious books
and manuscripts, and a variety of instruments. In 1578 Dee was sent
abroad to consult with German physicians and astrologers in regard to
the illness of the queen. On his return to England, he was employed in
investigating the title of the crown to the countries recently
discovered by British subjects, and in furnishing geographical
descriptions. Two large rolls containing the desired information, which
he presented to the queen, are still preserved in the Cottonian Library.
A learned treatise on the reformation of the calendar, written by him
about the same time, is also preserved in the Ashmolean Library at
Oxford.
From this period the philosophical researches of Dee were concerned
entirely with necromancy. In 1581 he became acquainted with Edward
Kelly, an apothecary, who had been convicted of forgery and had lost
both ears in the pillory at Lancaster. He professed to have discovered
the philosopher's stone, and by his assistance Dee performed various
incantations, and maintained a frequent imaginary intercourse with
spirits. Shortly afterwards Kelly and Dee were introduced by the earl of
Leicester to a Polish nobleman, Albert Laski, palatine of Siradz,
devoted to the same pursuits, who persuaded them to accompany him to his
native country. They embarked for Holland in September 1583, and arrived
at Laski's residence in February following. Upon Dee's departure the
mob, believing him a wizard, broke into his house, and destroyed a
quantity of furniture and books and his chemical apparatus. Dee and
Kelly lived for some years in Poland and Bohemia in alternate wealth and
poverty, according to the credulity or scepticism of those before whom
they exhibited. They professed to raise spirits by incantation; and
Kelly dictated the utterances to Dee, who wrote them down and
interpreted them.
Dee at length quarrelled with his companion, and returned to England in
1589. He was helped over his financial difficulties by the queen and his
friends. In May of 1595 he became warden of Manchester College. In
November 1604 he returned to Mortlake, where he died in December 1608,
at the age of eighty-one, in the greatest poverty. Aubrey describes him
as "of a very fair, clear sanguine complexion, with a long beard as
white as milk--a very handsome man--tall and slender. He wore a goune
like an artist's goune with hanging sleeves." Dee's _Speculum_ or
mirror, a piece of solid pink-tinted glass about the size of an orange,
is preserved in the British Museum.
His principal works are--_Propaedeumata aphoristica_ (London, 1558);
_Monas hieroglyphica_ (Antwerp, 1564); _Epistola ad Fredericum
Commandinum_ (Pesaro, 1570); _Preface Mathematical to the English
Euclid_ (1570); _Divers Annotations and Inventions added after the
tenth book of English Euclid_ (1570); _Epistola praefixa Ephemeridibus
Joannis Feldi, a. 1557; Parallaticae commentationis praxeosque nucleus
quidam_ (London, 1573). The catalogue of his printed and published
works is to be found in his _Compendious Rehearsal_, as well as in his
letter to Archbishop Whitgift. A manuscript of Dee's, relating what
passed for many years between him and some spirits, was edited by
Meric Casaubon and published in 1659. _The Private Diary of Dr John
Dee, and the Catalogue of his Library of Manuscripts_, edited by J. O.
Halliwell, was published by the Camden Society in 1842. There is a
life of Dee in Thomas Smith's _Vitae illustrium virorum_ (1707);
English translation by W. A. Ayton, the _Life of John Dee_ (1909).
DEE (Welsh, _Dyfrdwy_; Lat., and in Milton, _Deva_), a river of Wales
and England. It rises in Bala Lake, Merionethshire, which is fed by a
number of small streams. Leaving the lake near the town of Bala it
follows a north-easterly course to Corwen, turns thence E. by S. past
Llangollen to a point near Overton, and then bends nearly north to
Chester, and thereafter north-west through a great estuary opening into
the Irish Sea. In the Llangollen district the Dee crosses Denbighshire,
and thereafter forms the boundary of that county with Shropshire, a
detached part of Flint, and Cheshire. From Bala nearly down to Overton,
a distance of 35 m., during which the river falls about 330 ft., its
course lies through a narrow and beautiful valley, enclosed on the south
by the steep lower slopes of the Berwyn Mountains and on the north by a
succession of lesser ranges. The portion known as the Vale of Llangollen
is especially famous. Here an aqueduct carrying the Pontcysyllte branch
of the Shropshire Union canal bestrides the valley; it is a remarkable
engineering work completed by Thomas Telford in 1805. The Dee has a
total length of about 70 m. and a fall of 530 ft. Below Overton it
debouches upon its plain track. Below Chester it follows a straight
artificial channel to the estuary, and this is the only navigable
portion. The estuary, which is 14 m. long, and 5(1/4) m. wide at its
mouth, between Hilbre Point on the English and Point of Air on the Welsh
side, is not a commercial highway like the neighbouring mouth of the
Mersey, for though in appearance a fine natural harbour at high tide, it
becomes at low tide a vast expanse of sand, through which the river
meanders in a narrow channel. The navigation, however, is capable of
improvement, and schemes have been set on foot to this end. The tide
rushes in with great speed over the sands, and their danger is
illustrated in the well-known ballad "The Sands of Dee" by Charles
Kingsley. The Dee drains an area of 813 sq. m.
DEE, a river in the south of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, pursuing a
generally easterly direction from its source in the extreme west of the
county till it reaches the North Sea at the city of Aberdeen. It rises
in the Wells of Dee, a spring on Ben Braeriach, one of the Cairngorms,
at a height of 4061 ft. above the sea. It descends rapidly from this
altitude, and by the time that it receives the Geusachan, on its right
bank, about 6 m. from its source, it has fallen 2421 ft. From the
mountains flanking its upper reaches it is fed by numerous burns named
and unnamed. With its tributaries the river drains an area of 1000 sq.
m. Rapid and turbulent during the first half of its course of 90 m., it
broadens appreciably below Aboyne and the rate of flow is diminished.
The channel towards its mouth was artificially altered in order to
provide increased dock accommodation at Aberdeen, but, above, the stream
is navigable for only barges and small craft for a few miles. It runs
through scenery of transcendent beauty, especially in Braemar. About two
miles above Inverey it enters a narrow rocky gorge, 300 yds. long and
only a few feet wide at one part, and forms the rapids and cascades of
the famous Linn of Dee. One of the finest of Scottish salmon streams, it
retains its purity almost to the very end of its run. The principal
places on the Dee, apart from private residences, are Castleton of
Braemar, Ballater, Aboyne, Kincardine O'Neil, Banchory, Culter and
Cults.
DEED (in O. Eng. _dead_, from the stem of the verb "to do"), that which
is done, an act, doing; particularly, in law, a contract in writing,
sealed and delivered by the party bound to the party intended to
benefit. Contracts or obligations under seal are called in English law
_specialties_, and down to 1869 they took precedence in payment over
_simple_ contracts, whether written or not. Writing, sealing and
delivery are all essential to a deed. The signature of the party charged
is not material, and the deed is not void for want of a date. Delivery,
it is held, may be complete without the actual handing over of the deed;
it is sufficient if the act of sealing were accompanied by words or acts
signifying that the deed was intended to be presently binding; and
delivery to a third person for the use of the party benefited will be
sufficient. On the other hand, the deed may be handed over to a third
person as an _escrow_,[1] in which case it will not take effect as a
deed until certain conditions are performed. Such conditional delivery
may be inferred from the circumstances attending the transaction,
although the conditions be not expressed in words. A deed indented, or
indenture (so called because written in counterparts on the same sheet
of parchment, separated by cutting a wavy line between them so as to be
identified by fitting the parts together), is between two or more
parties who contract mutually. The actual indentation is not now
necessary to an indenture. The _deed-poll_ (with a polled or smooth-cut
edge, not indented) is a deed in which one party binds himself without
reference to any corresponding obligations undertaken by another party.
See CONTRACT.