||Spe"ci*e (?), abl. of L. species sort, kind. Used in the phrase in
||specie, that is, in sort, in kind, in (its own) form.
"[The king] expects a return in specie from them" [i. e., kindness
for kindness].
Dryden.
In specie (Law), in precise or definite form; specifically; according
to the exact terms; of the very thing.
Spe"cie (?), n. [Formed as a singular from species, in sense 5.] Coin;
hard money.
Spe"cies (?), n. sing. & pl. [L., a sight, outward appearance, shape,
form, a particular sort, kind, or quality, a species. See Spice, n.,
and cf. Specie, Special.] 1. Visible or sensible presentation;
appearance; a sensible percept received by the imagination; an image.
[R.] "The species of the letters illuminated with indigo and violet."
Sir I. Newton.
Wit, . . . the faculty of imagination in the writer, which searches
over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which
it designs to represent.
Dryden.
In the scholastic philosophy, the species was sensible and
intelligible. The sensible species was that in any material, object
which was in fact discerned by the mind through the organ of
perception, or that in any object which rendered it possible that it
should be perceived. The sensible species, as apprehended by the
understanding in any of the relations of thought, was called an
intelligible species. "An apparent diversity between the species
visible and audible is, that the visible doth not mingle in the medium,
but the audible doth." Bacon.
2. (Logic) A group of individuals agreeing in common attributes, and
designated by a common name; a conception subordinated to another
conception, called a genus, or generic conception, from which it
differs in containing or comprehending more attributes, and extending
to fewer individuals. Thus, man is a species, under animal as a genus;
and man, in its turn, may be regarded as a genus with respect to
European, American, or the like, as species.
3. In science, a more or less permanent group of existing things or
beings, associated according to attributes, or properties determined by
scientific observation.
In mineralogy and chemistry, objects which possess the same definite
chemical structure, and are fundamentally the same in crystallization
and physical characters, are classed as belonging to a species. In
zoölogy and botany, a species is an ideal group of individuals which
are believed to have descended from common ancestors, which agree in
essential characteristics, and are capable of indefinitely continued
fertile reproduction through the sexes. A species, as thus defined,
differs from a variety or subspecies only in the greater stability of
its characters and in the absence of individuals intermediate between
the related groups.
4. A sort; a kind; a variety; as, a species of low cunning; a species
of generosity; a species of cloth.
5. Coin, or coined silver, gold, ot other metal, used as a circulating
medium; specie. [Obs.]
There was, in the splendor of the Roman empire, a less quantity of
current species in Europe than there is now.
Arbuthnot.