Domitius in the Circus Flaminius at Rome, in the time of Pliny. Scopas has also the credit of being the sculptor of the celebrated group of Niobe and her Children, now preserved in the gallery of the Uffzi at Florence; but these works are ascribed also to Praxiteles. Of works in bronze by Scopas there is mentioned only the statue of Venus—Aphrodite Pandemos—sitting on a goat, described by Pausanias as at Elis. Strabo mentions an Apollo Smintheus (Ratkiller) by this sculptor, in the temple of that deity at Chrysa, a rat being placed under the foot of Apollo. The numerous works of this celebrated sculptor seem to have been of very varied character and of the highest excellence, but nothing can now be certainly identified as his; the Niobe group being doubtful, and the Budrun marbles mere dispersed fragments. Some of the draperies, however, of these fragments are exquisitely executed.—(Junius, Catalogus Artif.; Sillig. Cat. Artif.; Brunn, Geschichte der Griechischen Künstler, 1853.)—R. N. W.
SCOPOLI, Giovanni Antonio, a botanist, was born at Cavalese in the Tyrol, on 13th June, 1723, and died at Pavia on 8th May, 1788. He prosecuted his early studies at Trent, and took the degree of M.D. at Innspruck. He practised for some time as a physician at Idria, and he published there his "Flora Carniolica." The mines at Idria attracted his attention, and he became professor of mineralogy there. He afterwards occupied a similar chair at Schemnitz, and in 1777 he was appointed professor of natural history at Pavia, which office he continued to fill till his death. He published "Entomologia Carniolica;" "Tentamina Physico-chemico-medica;" and "Deliciæ Florae et Faunæ Insubriæ."—J. H. B.
SCORESBY, William, an English mariner, whose place in the records of navigation is mainly due to his experiences acquired during many years devoted to the whale-fishery in the Greenland seas. He was born in 1760 at Cropton in the North Riding of Yorkshire, about twenty miles distant from the seaport town of Whitby, with which latter place his own career, as well as that of his more distinguished son, became intimately associated. It was not until the age of twenty that he first engaged in a seafaring life; his prior years having been given to farming pursuits, in part on the farm occupied by his father, and in part upon those of neighbours. After the first few years of his sea experiences (in the course of which he escaped from a Spanish prison, the ship in which he sailed having been captured by a Spanish vessel), he left the sea for a season, and employed himself in duties on his father's farm. Resuming a sea life in 1785, he engaged in the Greenland whale-fishery, then extensively carried on from Whitby and other northern ports. Scoresby's first experience of this arduous course of life was acquired in the capacity of an ordinary seaman, but his abilities insured his speedy advancement, and in ensuing voyages he rose rapidly to the post of master. His first voyage as captain was made in 1791; and from that time till 1823 he was continuously engaged in the Greenland fishery, with a success till then unexampled, and which has remained unsurpassed. The total number of whaling voyages in which Scoresby held the command of his ship, was no less than thirty; and the cargoes obtained under his personal guidance during this period comprised the produce of five hundred and thirty-three whales, with many thousands of seals, besides walruses, narwhals, and other arctic animals. In 1823 Captain Scoresby retired from the laborious career to which so many years of his life had been devoted. He survived his retirement only six years, dying in 1829, before which period the high scientific reputation already acquired by his son had made the name of Scoresby known throughout the civilized world. It is not merely as a practical navigator of the first class that the elder Scoresby deserves to be remembered; he was the author of various improvements in the practice of arctic navigation (conspicuous amongst them the invention of "the round topgallant crow's nest," first used in 1807), and displayed on numerous occasions mental powers and resources of a high order. Some important public works in the improvement of the harbour and town of Whitby, were mainly due to papers and essays on the subject which proceeded from his pen.—W. H.
SCORESBY, William, D.D., son of the above, was born in 1790, and at the age of ten accompanied his father on one of his whaling voyages in the ship Dundee. During the years 1803 to 1811 he sailed yearly with his father in the Resolution in similar voyages, earning by good conduct his gradual promotion to the rank of first mate, which he already held in his sixteenth year. The periods of winter leisure between these successive voyages were devoted by young Scoresby to assiduous study—a considerable portion of two sessions being passed in attendance on the classes in the university of Edinburgh. In their voyage of 1806 the Scoresbys (the father filling the place of captain, the son that of chief mate) sailed to the high latitude (by observation) of 81° 12´ 42´´, little more than five hundred nautical miles from the pole. This feat, as it had been previously unexampled, still remains unsurpassed in the records of polar navigation; for though Parry, in his voyage of 1827, succeeded in reaching a higher parallel (82° 45) by the joint aid of boats and sledges, yet his ship had been unable to advance beyond 79° 55´. In 1811 the younger Scoresby succeeded his father in the command of the Resolution, in which he continued to sail during several succeeding years. It was in no small measure due to his suggestions, communicated to the government through Sir Joseph Banks, that the arctic voyages which distinguish the earlier portion of the present century were first undertaken. In 1820 (up to which time he had made seventeen voyages in the Greenland fishery) Scoresby published his "Account of the Arctic Regions, with a history and description of the Northern Whale-fishery," 2 vols., London. This work at once stamped his reputation as a scientific navigator, and its contents have constituted the groundwork of well-nigh all that has subsequently been written concerning the climate, productions, and other conditions of arctic latitudes. Its author quitted the sea in 1822, on his return from a voyage made in that year in the ship Baffin, and a narrative of which was published by him two years later. He was subsequently elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and a corresponding member of the French Institute. Up to this period of his life Scoresby had been throughout a sailor. It was not until some years after his relinquishment of the sea as a profession that he determined on entering the church—yielding in doing so to the ardent devotional aspirations which formed an essential part of his nature. He became a student of Queen's college, Cambridge, took his degree as B.A. in 1834, was subsequently ordained, and received the degree of doctor of divinity. He now accepted the chaplaincy of the Mariner's church at Liverpool, and subsequently held for some years the vicarage of Bradford in Yorkshire, upon relinquishing which he retired to Torquay in Devonshire. The later years of Dr. Scoresby's life were devoted chiefly to scientific pursuits, combined with the practice of an enlarged and earnest philanthropy. His experiences of the sea, however, were renewed on several later occasions—in two voyages across the Atlantic in 1847-48, and in the more arduous accomplishment of a voyage to Australia, undertaken in 1855, in pursuit of scientific objects. The effect produced by iron upon ships' compasses, and the practical measures to be adopted as means of safeguard against the dangers which the increasing use of iron in the construction of ships might involve in its influences upon the direction of the magnet, constituted the problems which engaged the chief share of Dr. Scoresby's attention during his later years, and form the topics with which his labours as a man of science are most intimately associated. Among his numerous published works are several valuable papers on this and kindred subjects, some of them in the form of communications to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, &c. Of his writings, one of the most popular is that entitled "Memorials of the Sea: my Father; being Records of the Adventurous Life of the late William Scoresby, Esq., of Whitby," London, 1851. Dr. Scoresby died in March, 1857, the year following that in which he had returned from his Australian voyage, leaving a widow—his third wife.—W. H.
SCOTT: the name of the great house of Buccleuch, which is said by tradition to have derived its origin from two brothers, natives of Galloway, who having been banished from that district for a riot or insurrection in the reign of Kenneth M'Alpin, took up their residence at Rankleburn, in Ettrick forest, in the lonely glen now called Buccleuch, from an exploit said to have been performed by one of the brothers. The surname of Scott does not, however, come into notice in the chartularies of Scotland till the twelfth century. The first chiefs of the Buccleuch branch of the family seem to have been military adventurers, possessing small properties acquired by marriage, or as grants for good services. The head of the clan in the reign of James I. was Sir Walter Scott, who held extensive possessions in Ettrick forest and Teviotdale. He exchanged his estate of Murdiestone in
