RAYNOUARD RAZZI 225 been perhaps the means of putting weapons into the hands of licentiousness and tyranny." KAYAOIAUD, Francois Juste Marie, a French author, born in Brignolles, Provence, Sept. 18, 1761, died at Passy, near Paris, Oct. 27, 1836. Elected an assistant deputy to the convention, he sided with the Girondists, and after their fall was detained in prison till the revolution of Thermidor (July 27, 1794). In 1803 he ob- tained a prize at the French academy for a poem entitled La vertu necessaire dans les re- publiques; and in the following year another for his Socrate dans le temple cPAglaure. In 1805 his tragedy Les templiers was very suc- cessful. He was a member of the corps 16gis- latif from 1806 to 1813, and was elected a member of the French academy in 1807. Du- ring the hundred days Raynouard was offered the title of councillor of the university and the post of minister of justice, both of which he declined. He published Choix de poesies origi- nales des troubadours (6 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1816- '21). His Lexique roman, ou Dictionnaire de la langue des troubadours, comparee aux autres langues de V Europe latine, was posthumously published (6 vols. 8vo, 1838-'44). He was elected perpetual secretary of the French acad- emy in 1817, but declined the usual salary at- tached to this office. Soon afterward, to save his brother from bankruptcy, he voluntarily gave up all his property. RAZOR FISH (xyrichthys, Val.), an acanthop- terygian genus belonging to the family of cyclo- labridcs. The body is compressed and covered with large scales, the lateral line interrupted ; the profile is almost vertical, the forehead trenchant, and the eyes high up ; the sharpness of the head is not owing to the interparietal crest as in coryphosna (the dolphin of sailors), but to the ethmoid and intermaxillaries grow- ing directly downward, the lower jaw being Mediterranean Razor Fish (Xyrichthys cultratus). horizontal and of ordinary length ; the cheeks are scaleless, and the snout smooth and blunt ; the dorsal is long and of uniform height ; the teeth are in one row, conical, largest in the middle ; the palate and tongue are smooth, but the pharynx is furnished with small and pave- ment-like teeth ; the intestinal tube is simple, without stomachal dilatation and pancreatic cajca ; the air bladder is large, pointed in front. The type of the genus is the razor fish of the Mediterranean (X. cultratus, Val.) ; it is about 8 in. long, reddish, variously striped with blu- ish ; its flesh is highly esteemed as a delicate food ; it lives solitary, on sandy bottoms near the shores, feeding on such fish and mollusks as its very small mouth enables it to swallow. About a dozen other species, of the same size, are found in the East and "West Indies, among the Pacific islands, and on the coast of South America, where their flesh is eaten ; in some the three anterior rays of the dorsal are de- tached and far forward, forming two dorsals. RAZOR SHELL (solen, Linn.), the type of the lamellibranchiate family of solenidce. The ge- nus is characterized by two adductor muscles, the mantle open anteriorly and produced into two short united siphons, the branchiae at- tached to the lower ; the foot is long and club- shaped ; the shells are elongated, equivalve, and gaping at both ends ; the hinge has two or three compressed teeth in each valve, and is nearly terminal ; the ligament is long and external. The common razor shell of our Common Eazor Shell (Solen ensis). coast is the 8. ensis (Linn.), of a scabbard shape, about 6 in. long and an inch high, with rounded ends, white within and covered out- side by a glossy yellowish or brownish green epidermis. It is found on sandy beaches near low-water mark, where it burrows beneath the surface, whence it is sometimes displaced by storms ; it descends into the sand with as- tonishing rapidity; the animal is cylindrical, longer than the shell, and is often used as food under the names of long claw, knife handle, and razor fish. The S. siliqua and 8. curtits of Europe have similar habits, sinking verti- cally in the sand, foot downward; their bur- rows are sometimes 2 ft. deep, and they as- cend and descend in them very quickly by widening or narrowing the foot. They are used as food, and as bait for cod and had- dock ; their burrows may be known by small orifices like keyholes, into which the fisher- men put a little salt; this so irritates the tubes that the animal ascends near the sur- face, and is dragged out with an iron hook. They are found in almost all seas. RAZZI, Giovanni Antonio, called IL SODOMA, an Italian painter, born in Vercelli, Piedmont, about 1479, died in Siena, Feb. 14, 1554. He formed his style on that of Leonardo da Vinci, and was early employed by Pope Julius II. to execute a series of works in the Vatican, afterward in part obliterated to make room for frescoes of Raphael. In the Chigi palace, now Farnesina, he painted in fresco the "Mar- riage of Alexander and Roxana " and the " Fam- ily of Darius." His best works are at Siena, including the " Adoration of the Magi " in the church of S. Agostino, and the " Flagellation " in the convent of S. Francisco.
