Deseada (de-se-ä´da˙), or Désirade, one of the Leeward Islands, belonging to the French, in the Caribbean Sea, about 10 miles long and hardly 5 miles broad. The soil is in some places black and good, in others sandy and unproductive. Pop. about 1500.
Deser´tion. In the military sense this implies the act of an officer or soldier who, either with the intention of not returning at all or of returning when by reason of his absence it has become impossible for him to perform a given duty, absents himself from His Majesty's service. The essence of the offence is intention, and this must be proved to the satisfaction of the court martial by which the offender is tried. The distance travelled is no criterion, and a man arrested while leaving the barracks in disguise may be tried for attempted desertion. In this connection it should be noted that an attempt to desert, or an attempt to procure another person to desert, is also an offence, and is punishable under Section 12 of the Army Act equally with the completed act. As far back as the middle of the fifteenth century the crime of desertion by a soldier was made a felony triable by the ordinary law of the land, and with certain interludes death remained the maximum penalty for desertion for some 200 years. The present existing Army Act recognizes two degrees of desertion, i.e. that committed on active service or when under orders for active service, and that committed under other circumstances. Under the former heading the maximum punishment is death; under the latter, imprisonment or penal servitude, according to the number of times the offence has been committed. A soldier convicted of desertion forfeits the whole of his service prior to conviction.
Desertion, in law, the term applied to the act by which a man abandons his wife or a wife her husband. Such desertion without due cause is, in England, ground for a judicial separation. Property a wife may have acquired since desertion is protected against her husband, and he may be forced to provide for her maintenance. By Scottish law, where either the husband or wife has deserted and remained separate without due cause for four years, divorce may be obtained.
Deshoulières (dā-söl-yār), Antoinette du Ligier de Lagarde, a French woman of much literary reputation in the seventeenth century, born 1638, died 1694. She was the centre of attraction in the best circles of the period, and was elected a member of several learned societies. She wrote in the Mercure Galant under the name of Amaryllis, and Boileau has described her in his tenth Satire. Among her works are odes, eclogues, idyls, and a tragedy (Genseric).
Desiccation, a process of dispelling moisture by the use of air, heat, or chemical agents such as chloride of calcium, quicklime, oil of vitriol, and fused carbonate of potash.—Desiccation cracks, in geology, are the fissures caused in clayey beds by the sun's heat, and seen in various rock strata.
Design, thought, arrangement, or grouping, imagination or invention in works of art. A design is a composition or invention, pictorial, architectural, or decorative. It may be simply an imperfect sketch, as a record of a first thought; or it may be a fully matured work, as a cartoon in preparation for fresco painting, or a drawing to illustrate a book.
Desmidia´ceæ, or Desmidie´æ, a family of microscopic, fresh-water Green Algæ, group Conjugatæ. They are green gelatinous plants composed of variously formed cells having a bilateral symmetry, which are either free, or in linear series, or collected into bundles or into
star-like groups, and embedded in a common gelatinous coat. Desmidiaceæ differ from Diatomaceæ in their green colour and absence of silica.
Desmo´dium, a large genus of leguminous plants, sub-ord. Papilionaceæ, natives of tropical and sub-tropical countries. D. gyrans is the telegraph plant, so called from the curious movements performed by the two small lateral leaflets of each leaf, which, at high temperatures, wave up and down like the arms of a semaphore.
Des Moines (dė moin), a city of the United States, capital of the state of Iowa and of Polk County, on the Des Moines River, about 350 miles west of Chicago. Among its chief buildings are the new State house, the State arsenal, university, and opera-houses. There are coal-mines in the vicinity, and the manufactures and other industries are varied and rapidly increasing. Pop. 104,052 (1917).