Chapter Specialism to Spectacled of S by Webster's Dictionary (1913 Edition)

3. (Law) A contract or obligation under seal; a contract by deed; a writing, under seal, given as security for a debt particularly specified. Chitty. Bouvier. Wharton

Let specialties be therefore drawn between us.

Shak.

4. That for which a person is distinguished, in which he is specially versed, or which he makes an object of special attention; a speciality.

Men of boundless knowledge, like Humbold, must have had once their specialty, their pet subject.

C. Kingsley.

Specie
(||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.

Specie
(Spe"cie) n. [Formed as a singular from species, in sense 5.] Coin; hard money.

Species
(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.