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VEGETABLE MAEBOW 176 VEIN" 1583 up to a little before the sailing of the Armada, with a prediction from an astrologer of his marriage, imprison- ment, and banishment. In all he is credited with 1,500 comedies, of which more than 500 are extant and about 340 are well known. VEGETABLE MARROW, a species of gourd cultivated as a culinary vege- table, and used fried, boiled, or other- wise. VEGETARIANISM, a system popu- larly designated as limiting the human diet to foods obtained from the vegetable kingdom exclusively, and abstaining from all foods obtained from the animal kingdom. This is an approximately cor- rect definition of what was meant by the word when the Vegetarian Society was founded in Manchester, England, in 1847. It was not long, however, before it was discovered that there was as great a need of discrimination in the use of the various products of the vege- table kingdom as there was cause to abjure the use of flesh. Vegetables are not all equally wholesome, some are ab- solutely poisonous. There is a great dif- ference between the stalks and leaves and the seeds of plants. Cooked and uncooked foods differ greatly. The study of food leads to the study of equally im- portant laws. Eggs, milk, cheese, butter (animal products) differ from the car- casses of slaughtered animals. Many of the arguments against the use of flesh do not apply to the use of fish. Vegetarianism has spread so exten- sively that in addition to its pledged ad- herents it has a still greater number who practice abstinence from flesh to a greater or lesser degree in obedience to medical advice, for the curing or reliev- ing of disorders of digestion, gout, and rheumatism. The Catholic Church en- joins abstinence from flesh during Lent, and on some other days during the year. Many religious orders (e. g., the Trappists) abstain wholly from flesh. Brahmins also abstain from flesh and eggs. The Vegetarian Federal Union was formed in 1889. It offices are in London. To it are affiliated the Vege- tarian Society, the London Vegetarian Society, a considerable number of other English societies, and those of the United States (founded in 1850), Ger- many, and Australia. An international congress was held in Cologne in 1889, and in London in 1890. There are now vegetarian restaurants in hiany large towns. VEII (ve'yi)» an ancient city of Etruria (q. V.) ; in early times the for- midable rival of Eome, supposed to have been at Isola Farnese, 12 miles from Rome. It waged 14 distinct wars with Rome — an almost incessant warfare down to its capture after a 10 years' siege by Camillus (396 B. c). VEIN, in anatomy, one of a number of thin ramifying elastic tubes arising in the extremities of the body, and pro- ceeding by a more or less direct course to the heart, to which they carry back the blood sent forth by the arteries and transferred to them by the capillaries connecting the two kinds of vessels. They fall under three great divisions: the pulmonary, the systemic veins, and those constituting the portal system. The pulmonary veins consist of four short venous trunks which carry the red blood back from the lungs to the left side of the heart, and which are found two on each side in the root of the correspond- ing lung. The systemic veins arise by small branches, which receive the blood from the capillaries throughout the body, and uniting to form larger vessels and then two large venous trunks, the su- perior and inferior venae cavae, finally enter the right auricle of the heart, into which the coronary veins also conduct the blood which nourishes that organ itself. These systemic veins are natur- ally divided into two groups according to the channel by which they enter the heart. The veins of the head, the neck, the upper limbs, the spine, the heart, and part of the walls of the thorax and ab- domen, make their entrance into the right auricle by the superior vena cava, while those of the lower part of the trunk and the abdominal viscera do so by the ineferior vena cava. The veins of the portal system bring back the blood from the stomach, the intestines, the spleen, and the pancreas; then joining, they form the great portal vein which ramifies in the surface of the liver, after the manner of an artery, before finally entering the heart by the inferior vena cava. In geology, a crack in a rock filled up by substances different from the rock. These may be either earthy or metallic. In very many cases the fissures have been produced by volcanic or earthquake action, and they often coincide with faults. Water descending by these fis- sures to unknown depths has been raised to so high a temperature that it has be- come capable of holding in solution vari- ous metallic and other mineral sub- stances. As the water has cooled it has gradually deposited these matters held in solution, not doing so simultaneously, but in succession. Metalliferous veins vary greatly in width, being sometimes a few inches, frequently three or four