bill is drawn, and who must accept and pay it. 3. The person who gives a valuable consideration for the bill, and to whom, or to whose order it is to be paid: and 4. The person to whom payment is to be made, and who is creditor to the third. By this operation, reciprocal debts, which are due in two distant places, are paid by a kind of transfer, or permutation of debtors and creditors.
Beside those merchants, who circulate among themselves their reciprocal debts and credits, arising from their importation and exportation of goods, there is another class of men who deal in exchange; that is, in the importation and exportation of money and bills. When, however, balances are to be made, exchange becomes intricate; and merchants, being engaged in their particular branches of trade, commonly intrust these complicated calculations to certain agents, who are thence called exchange-brokers, and have made this a most lucrative employment.
The Course of Exchange, is the current price between two places, which is always fluctuating and unsettled, being sometimes above, and at others below par, according to the circumstances of trade. When the course of exchange rises above par, the balance of trade is said to run against that country where it rises. But, though the course of exchange be in a perpetual fluctuation, and rise or fall, according to various circumstances, yet the exchanges of London, Hamburgh, Amsterdam, and Venice, regulate those of all the other trading places of Europe.—Such readers as are desirous to make themselves acquainted with the laws of this country, as they relate to cash bills, and bills of exchange, will find ample information in Mr. Chitty's "Treatise on Bills of Exchange," &c. (8vo. 7s.), where the subject is perspicuously and accurately treated.
EXCORIATION, or fretting of the skin, is a complaint sometimes arising from want of due attention to infants, or in persons unaccustomed to ride on horseback, or those who are unfortunately bed-ridden.
If the excoriation be only of a superficial kind, the application of a little hot flour, or covering the part affected with fine silken oil-cloth, will generally heal it in a fews days: but, if these simple means do not succeed, an ointment consisting of one ounce of the finest mutton-suct, and a dozen drops of the common oil of turpentine, graly added while the former is melting, has generally been found of service.
In those cases, however, where the true skin is affected, so that the excoriation is attended with considerable pain, it will be useful immediately to apply the plant called self-heal (prunella vulgaris), finely pounded in a marble mortar, with the addition of a few grains of alum. Thus, the inflammation of the contiguous parts may be prevented; but, if this have already taken place, it should be previously reduced by a timely application of emollient Poultices, to which we refer.
Excrescence. See Wart.
EXCRETION, in animal economy, is the discharge of foul or noxious humours, by stool.
As the food and drink daily consumed must necessarily deposit feculent and useless matter, moderate evacuations by stool, are both
