Images de page
PDF
ePub

CHAMBERS'S

ENCYCLOPEDIA:

A DICTIONARY

OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE FOR THE PEOPLE,

ILLUSTRATED.

VOL. III.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

EDINBURGH: W. & R. CHAMBERS.

1864.

Сусі 349,26

HARVARD COLLEGE Nov 22.1933

LIBRARY

Transferred from Engineering Library

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1862, by

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,

In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

3

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

CHIVA'SSO, a small city of Piedmont, Northern Italy, situated in a fertile plain on the left bank of the Po, about 15 miles north-east of Turin. It was formerly a place of considerable military importance, but its fortifications were destroyed in 1804 by the French. The lampreys of C. are celebrated throughout Piedmont. It has manufactures of bricks, earthenware, soap, &c., and a trade in the agricultural produce of the district. Pop. about 8000.

CHIVE, or CIVE (Allium schoenoprasum), a plant of the same genus with the leek and onion (see ALLIUM), a perennial, 1 foot in height, with very small, flat, clustered bulbs, increasing by its bulbs so as to form a sort of turf. The leaves are tubular, cylindrical-tapering, radical, nearly as long as the almost leafless flowering-stem, which is terminated by a hemispherical, many flowered, not bulbiferous umbel of bluish red, or, more rarely, flesh-coloured flowers. The stamens are included within the perianth. This rather pretty little plant grows wild on the banks of rivers, and in marshy or occasionally flooded places in the middle latitudes of Europe and Asia. It is a rare native of Britain. In some of the mountainous districts of Europe a variety is found, larger and stronger in all its parts, and with flowering-stems more leafy. Chives-the name is generally used in the plural-are commonly cultivated in kitchen-gardens, often as an edging for plots, and are used for flavouring soups and dishes. Their properties are very similar to those of the onion. The part used is the young leaves, which bear repeated cuttings in the season.

CHIZEROTS AND BURINS form one of those peculiar races in France that live isolated in the midst of the rest of the population, and are despised and hated by their neighbours. They live in the arrondissement of Bourg-en-Bresse, in the department of Ain; and the communes of Sermoyer, Arbigny, Boz, and Ozan belong to them. According to tradition, they are descended from the Saracens. Although industrious and prosperous,

they are held in the utmost contempt and detestation by their peasant neighbours, who are often indolent and destitute. They are looked upon as covetous and malicious, and scarcely would the daughter of a small farmer, or well-to-do day. labourer, become the wife of one of them, so that they mostly marry among themselves. From time immemorial, the C. and B. have been field-labourers, cattle-dealers, butchers, &c. Many of them are very good-looking. The young women are handsome, clear-complexioned, with large black eyes. Michel, Histoire des Races Maudites de la France et de l'Espagne (2 vols. Par. 1847).

See

CHLADNI, ERNST FLORENS FRIEDRICH, founder of the science of acoustics, was born at Wittenberg, November 30, 1756. He studied law in his native place, and also in Leipsic, where, in 1782, he was made Doctor of Laws. C. ultimately abandoned juridical studies altogether, devoted his mind to natural science, and, being acquainted with music, was led to observe that the laws of sound were by no means so well established as those of other branches of physics. He therefore began to apply his knowledge of mathematics and physics to acoustics, and travelled for ten years (after 1802) through Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Russia, and Denmark, giving lectures on the subject, which were very successful. He died in Breslau, April 3, 1827.-C.'s writings include, Discoveries concerning the Theory of Sound (1787), Acoustics (1802), New Contributions to Acoustics (1817), and Contributions to Practical Acoustics, with Remarks on the making of Instruments (1822). C. also wrote several essays on meteoric stones.

CHLAMY'PHORUS (Gr. chlamys-bearing; chlamys, a soldier's cloak), a very remarkable genus of mammalia of the order Edentata, ranked by naturalists in the same family with the armadillos, but differing in important respects from them, and from all other known quadrupeds. Only one species is known, C. truncatus, five or six inches long, a

CHLOPICKI-CHLORIMETRY.

native of the interior of Chili, living underground like the mole, which it much resembles in its habits, and feeding on the same kind of food. Its fore-feet are adapted for digging, although in a different manner from those of the mole. The skull is destitute of sutures; there are resemblances to the

Chlamyphorus.

osteology of birds in the ribs and their union to the sternum; the hinder part of the body is altogether unlike that of any other known animal, in its terminating quite abruptly, as if cut off almost where its thickness is greatest, or as if the back were suddenly bent down at right angles, the tail not springing from where the line of the back appears to terminate, but far below. The whole upper and hinder parts of the body are covered with a coat of mail, made up of a series of square plates; the under parts and legs are covered with long silky hair. The tail is very peculiar ; it is covered with small scales, is expanded at the tip, and is usually incurved along the belly, but is furnished with such muscles as to suggest the probability of its being employed to throw back the

earth in excavations.

CHLOPICKI, JOSEPH, a Polish general, and Dictator of Poland during the revolution of 1830, was born in Galicia in 1772. He entered the army in 1787, attracted the notice of Kosciusko during the first insurrection of the Poles, and after the storming of Praga, 9th November 1794, when the hopes of the patriots were extinguished for awhile, he passed into the service of the new Cisalpine Republic, and distinguished himself in various battles. In 1806 when Bonaparte called the Poles to arms, C., among others, obeyed, and fought gallantly at Eylau and Friedland. He was subsequently sent by the emperor into Spain, and in 1812 followed him to Russia, taking part in the bloody engagements at Smolensk and Moskwa. After the relics of the invading force had returned, C. left the imperial service, on account of receiving certain slights in the way of his professional advancement. After the taking of Paris by the allies in 1814, he led back to Poland the remains of the Polish troops who had fought under Bonaparte, and was well received by the Emperor Alexander, who made him a general of division. When the second insurrection of the Poles broke out in 1830, C., who foresaw the hopeless nature of the attempt, concealed himself; but the voice of the nation called him forth from his hiding-place, and on the 5th December 1830, he was elected dictator. His moderate views, however, involved him in disputes with the extreme patriotic party, and on the 23 January 1831, he resigned his office; but, to prove his sincerity, he entered the Polish army as a simple soldier, and took part in the murderous battles at Wavre and Grochow. After the suppression of the insurrection, C. went to

[blocks in formation]

CHLORANTHA'CEE, a natural order of exogenons plants, closely allied to the peppers; herbaceous and half-shrubby plants, with jointed stems, opposite simple leaves, and minute stipules between them. The flowers are in terminal spikes, and are destitute of calyx and corolla, but have each a small scale or bract. The stamens are lateral; either only one or few, and partly cohering. The Ovary is one-celled, immediately crowned with the stigma; the ovule is pendulous; the fruit a drupe or one-seeded berry; the embryo naked, not in a fleshy sac as in the peppers.-The number of known species is small: all of them are tropical, or natives of China and Japan. They are generally aromatic, and some of them, as species of Chloranthus in the East Indies, and of Hedyosmum in the West Indies and South America, are used as antispasmodics, stimulants, stomachics, and tonics. The roots of Chloranthus officinalis and C. brachystachys have been ranked among the most efficacious remedies in fevers and other diseases requiring continual and active stimulants, and instances have occurred of great benefit from their employment during the prevalence of epidemics in Java. C. inconspicuus is the CHU-LAN of the Chinese; its leaves, spikes of flowers, and berries are used by them for imparting a peculiar fragrance to tea. All the teas which have what is called the cowslip flavour owe it to this plant.

atom of chlorine and five atoms of oxygen, and CHLO'RIC ACID (ClO) is a compound of one is generally met with in combination with potash, as the white crystalline salt, chlorate of potash (KO,CIO). This salt is mainly interesting from the readiness with which it parts with its oxygen to combustibles, as when thrown on red-hot charcoal, when it causes violent deflagration. The salt is employed in the fabrication of certain kinds of lucifer-matches, which give a slight explosion when struck. If a crystal of chlorate of potash be placed on a piece of paper saturated with turpentine, and a drop or two of oil of vitriol added, it causes the inflaming of the turpentine with explosive rapidity. The chlorate of potash is also used in medicine, with the view of imparting oxygen to the blood.

CHLORIMETRY, or CHLORO'METRY, is the process of estimating the proportion of available chlorine in bleaching powder (q. v.), which may vary from 20 to 36 per cent. The process depends upon the great power with which chlorine, in the act of being liberated from its compounds, causes the oxidation of many substances. The salt generally used is pure crystallised sulphate of iron, which, in its ordinary state, gives a deep blue colour, with a drop of ferrideyanide of potassium, but ceases to do so when it has been fully oxidised, or converted from a proto-salt into a per-salt, through the influence of chlorine. It being known that 78 grains or parts of sulphate of iron are oxidised by 10 grains or parts of chlorine, the mode of procedure in C. is as follows: 78 grains of fine crystals of the sulphate of iron are dissolved in water slightly acidulated with hydrochloric acid in a white porcelain basin. A given quantity of the bleaching powder-say 50 grains-is dissolved in a little tepid water, and introduced into a tall measure-glass called a chlorimeter or burette (figs. 1, 2, and 3), similar to an alkalimeter, which is divided

[graphic]
« PrécédentContinuer »