NUNC DIMITTIS -NÜRNBERG.

to a priest delegated by the bishop. The authority of the abbess over her nuns is very comprehensive, but a precise line is drawn between her powers and those of the priestly office, from which she is strictly debarred. The name of nun is given in general to the sisters of all religious congregations of females who live in retirement and are bound by rule; but it is primitively and properly applicable only to sisters of the religious orders strictly so called. See MONACHISM.

NUNC DIMITTIS, the name given to the canticle of Simeon (Luke ii. 29-32), which forms part of the conpline office of the Roman Breviary, and is retained in the evening service of the Anglican Church when it follows the second lesson. On the great festivals in Lent, the music of this canticle is especially grand and imposing.

NU'NCIO (Ital. nunzio, Lat. nuncius, a messenger), the name given to the superior grade of the ambassadors sent by the pope to foreign_courts, who are all called by the general name of LEGATE (q. v.). A nuncio is an ambassador to the court of an emperor or king. The ambassador to a republic, or to the court of a minor sovereign, is called INTER

NUNCIO.

NUNCU'PATIVE WILL is a will made by word of mouth. As a general rule, no will is valid unless it is in writing and signed by the testator; but in cases of soldiers and sailors, a verbal or nuncupative will is held to be good, on the ground that there is often no time to draw up a formal will in writing.

NUNEATON, a small market-town of England, in the county of Warwick, and 18 miles north-east of the town of that name. It contains a small parish church in Gothic, and its Free Grammar School, founded by Edward VI. in 1553, has an annual income from endowment of about £300. Manufactures of ribbons and cotton goods are carried on. Pop, about 7000.

NU'NQUAM INDE BITATUS, in English Law, means a plea or defence to an action for a debt that the defendant never was indebted; in other words, that no debt is due.

NURAGHE, the name of certain structures, of conical shape, in the island of Sardinia, rising 30 or 40 feet above the ground, with two or three stories of domed chambers connected by a spiral staircase.

View of the Nuraghe of Goni, in Sardinia.

Some are raised on basements of masonry, or platforms of earth. They are made of granite limestone, basalt, porphyry, sandstone, and schist. Their entrances are small and low, and when they have

chambers of two stories, the upper chamber is reached by the spiral staircase which has loopholes to admit the light. The tops are supposed to have had a terrace. Although 3000 of them exist, none are perfect. Their masonry is irregular, but not polygonal, and resembles the style of work called

Plan and Elevation of the Nuraghe of Goni, in Sardinia.

Asiatic.
other uninscribed monuments, their object and
Like the round towers of Ireland, and
antiquity are enveloped in much doubt. They have
been supposed to be the work of the Pelasgi, the
Phoenicians, or Carthaginians, and to have been
ancient sepulchres, Tholi or Daedalia, constructed in
heroic times. Skeletons, and other funeral para-
phernalia, have been found in them. They have
many points of resemblance to the Burghs' or
Duns on the northern shores of Scotland, of
which the Burgh of Mousa, in Shetland, is perhaps
the best example.-De la Marmora, Voyage en
Sardaigne, tom. ii.; Petit Radel, Nuraghes (Paris,
1826-1828); Micali, Ant. Pop. Ital. ii. p. 43;
Dennis, Cities and Cem. of Etruria, ii. p. 161.

NÜRNBERG (Norimberga, Norica), a fortified city of the Bavarian province of Middle Franconia, situated in 49° 28' N. lat., and 11° 5 E. long. Population, at the close of 1871, 83,214. N. is one of the most remarkable and interesting cities of Germany, on account of the numerous remains of medieval architecture which it presents in its picturesque strects, with their gabled houses, stone balconies, and quaint carvings. No city retains a stronger impress of the characteristics which distinguished the wealthy burgher-classes in the middle ages, while its double lines of fortified walls, separated from each other by public walks and gardens, and guarded by 70 towers, together with the numerous bridges which span the Pegnitz, on whose banks the city is built, give it distinctive features of its own. Among the most remarkable of its numerous public buildings are the old palace or castle, commanding, from its high position, a glorious view of the surrounding country, and interesting for its antiquity, and for its gallery of paintings, rich in gems of early German art; the town-hall, which ranks amongst the noblest of its kind in Germany, and is adorned with works of Albert Dürer, and Gabriel Weyher; the noble Gothic fountain opposite the cathedral by Schonhofer, with its numerous groups of figures, beautifully restored in modern times; and many other fountains deserving notice. Of the numerous churches of N., the following are the most remarkable: St Lawrence, built between 1270-1478, with its beautiful painted-glass windows, its noble towers and doorway, and the celebrated stone pyx, completed in 1500, by Adam Kraft, after five years' assiduous labour; and the

NURSE-NUT.

exquisite wood-carvings of Veit Stoss; St Sebald's, Nurses, who take care of the sick in their wards in with its numerous fine glass-paintings and frescoes Military Hospitals. by Peter Visscher and other German masters; the cathedral, or Our Lady's, built in 1631, similarly enriched. N. is well provided with educational establishments, and besides a good gymnasium and polytechnic institution, has good schools of art, normal and other training colleges, a public library of 50,000 vols., galleries of art collections, museums, &c.; while the numerous institutions of benevolence are liberally endowed and well maintained. Although the glory of the foreign commerce of N. may be said to have been long extinct, its home trade, which is still of considerable importance, includes the specialities of metal, wood and bone carvings, and children's toys and dolls, which find a ready sale in every part of Europe, and are largely exported to America and the East. In addition to its own industrial commerce, it is the seat of a large transfer and exchange business, which owes much of its importance to the facilities of intercommunication afforded by the net-work of railway lines with which the city is connected.

NUTATION-NUT-HATCH.

Many nuts have a considerable commercial value, from mean' right ascension and declination, the from their being favourite articles of food: these former involving, and the latter being freed from are the Hazel-nut and its varieties, the Black the fluctuations arising from nutation. This motion Spanish, the Barcelona, the Smyrna, the Jerusalem is common to all the planets. filbert, and the common filbert; the Walnut, Chestnut, Hickory, and Pecan; the Souari, the Cocoa, and

the Brazil or Para nut.

The Barcelona and Black Spanish, as their names imply, are from Spain; the former is the commonest nut of English shops. About 120,000 bags, averaging 1 bushel each, or 150,000 bushels, are annually imported into Great Britain. The import value is about 15s. per bushel. They are always kiln-dried when received. In 1867, 279,991 bushels of hazel-nuts, valued at £196,998, were imported into Great Britain. The duty, which was reduced in 1853 to 1s. per ton, was abolished in 1862. From the Black Sea Britain receives annually about 68,000 bushels of hazel-nuts, worth 10s. per bushel, with from 500 to 1000 bags of the so-called Jerusalem and Mount Atlas filberts. Of chestnuts from Leghorn, Naples, Spain, France, and Portugal, Britain receives annually about 20,000 bushels. The trade in walnuts. is very uncertain, and probably never exceeds 5000 bushels. Of the curious three-cornered or Brazil nut from Para and Maranham, the importation is also very irregular, varying from 300 to 1000 tons, or 1200 to 4000 bushels per annum. About two millions of cocoa-nuts are also imported. The other kinds of nuts are too irregular in their importations to supply any reliable statistics. The annual value of all the nuts imported into Great Britain is computed at £153,000.

NUTATION is a slight oscillatory movement of the earth's axis, which disturbs the otherwise circular path described by the pole of the earth round that of the ecliptic, known as the 'precession of the equinoxes.' It is produced by the same causes, viz. the attraction of the sun, moon, and planets (the attraction of the last mentioned being so small as to be quite imperceptible) upon the bulging zone about the earth's equator, though in this case it is the moon alone that is the effective agent. It also, for reasons which need not be given here, depends, for the most part, not upon the position of the moon in her orbit, but of the moon's node. If there was no precession of the equinoxes, nutation would appear as a small elliptical motion of the earth's axis, performed in the same time as the moon's nodes take to complete a revolution, the axes of the ellipse being respectively 18"-5 and 13"-7, the longer axis being

NUT-CRACKER (Nucifraga), a genus of birds of the family Corvide, with a straight conical bill, both mandibles terminating in an obtuse point, and tail nearly square at the end. The form and characters are nearly similar to those of crows, but the habits are rather those of jays. N. columbiana (Wils.), the only American species, inhabits the region west of the Rocky Mountains. It is ashy, with black wings, and

is a foot in length. It inhabits high forests, eats
One species (N.
seeds, and is active and noisy.
caryocatactes or C. nucifraga) is occasionally seen
in Britain, and is not uncommon in many parts of
regions covered with pines. It is about the size of a
Europe and of Asia, particularly in mountainous
jackdaw, but has a longer tail. The N. frequents the
tops of high pines, and is a shy bird.

NUT-HATCH (Sitta), a genus of birds of the family Certhiada, having a straight conical or pris

European Nut-hatch (Sitta Europaea).

matic bill, short legs, the hind-toe very strong. They run up and down trees with great agility, moving with equal ease in either direction, and without hopping, so that the motion is rather like that of a mouse than of a bird. They feed on insects, in pursuit of which they examine the crevices, and remove the scales of the bark; also on seeds, as those of pines, and the kernels of nuts, to obtain which they fasten the nut firmly in some crevice

The effect of nutation, when referred to the equator and ecliptic, is to produce a periodical change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, and in the velocity of retrograda'ion of the equinoctial points. It thus gives rise to the distinction of 'apparent'

NURSE-NUT.

exquisite wood-carvings of Veit Stoss; St Sebald's, with its numerous fine glass-paintings and frescoes by Peter Visscher and other German masters; the cathedral, or Our Lady's, built in 1631, similarly enriched. N. is well provided with educational establishments, and besides a good gymnasium and polytechnic institution, has good schools of art, normal and other training colleges, a public library of 50,000 vols., galleries of art collections, museums, &c.; while the numerous institutions of benevolence are liberally endowed and well maintained. Although the glory of the foreign commerce of N. may be said to have been long extinct, its home trade, which is still of considerable importance, includes the specialities of metal, wood and bone carvings, and children's toys and dolls, which find a ready sale in every part of Europe, and are largely exported to America and the East. In addition to its own industrial commerce, it is the scat of a large transfer and exchange business, which owes much of its importance to the facilities of intercommunication afforded by the net-work of railway lines with which the city is connected.

N. was raised to the rank of a free imperial city by the Emperor Henry V., in 1219, previous to which time, Henry IV. had ennobled 38 of the principal burgher families, who forthwith arrogated to themselves supreme power over the N. territory. In the 13th c., we find it under the title of a burggraviate in the hands of the Hohenzollern family, who, in 1417, ceded for a sum of money all their territorial and manorial rights to the magistracy of the city. This measure put a stop to the feuds which had hitherto raged between the burggrafs and the municipality, and for a time N. continued to grow rich with the fruits of the great internal trade, which it had long maintained between the traders of the East and the other European marts of commerce. The discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope, by opening new channels of communication between Asia and Europe, deprived N. of its ancient monopoly. The Thirty Years' War completed the decay of the city, which suffered severely from both parties in turn. The ancient reputation of N. as a wealthy and loyal city of Germany secured to it, however, special consideration; and in 1806, when the imperial commissioners reorganised some of the dismembered parts of the old empire, it was allowed to retain its independence, with a territory of 483 square miles, containing 40,000 inhabitants, and drawing a revenue of 800,000 guldens; but in consequence of the disputes in which the free city became involved with the king of Prussia, who had some hereditary claim on the ancient burggraviate, N., alarmed at the prospect of still greater embarrassments, entered into the Rhenish Confederation, and as the result of this alliance, was transferred, in 1806, with the surrender of its entire domain and all rights of sovereignty, to the king of Bavaria.

Nurses, who take care of the sick in their wards in
Military Hospitals.

devoted to the raising of young plants, to be after-
NURSERY, & garden or portion of a garden
wards planted elsewhere. The ripening of garden-
seeds for sale is generally also an important part of
the trade of the public nurseryman. Many culinary
vegetables are very commonly raised from seed in
public nurseries, and sold as young plants; the
trouble of raising them in small gardens being found
too great, although, when there is no public nursery
at hand, even the cottage-gardener may be compelled
to undertake this trouble for himself, in order to
procure a supply of young tomato plants, lettuce,
cabbage, &c., in fresh and healthful condition. Many
lowering plants, as verbenas, fuchsias, lantanas,
&c., are also raised and sold by nurserymen.
Another great use of the nursery is the rearing

of fruit-trees.

In the nursery, the stocks are raised from seed, the grafting is performed, and the training of the young tree, whether for standard, espalier, or wall tree, is begun. As, with regard to fruit-trees, the selection of grafts is of the utmost importance, the reputation of the nurseryman is particularly to be considered by the purchaser; nor is there any trade in which this is more generally necessary, months, or sometimes years elapsing before the quality of the goods purchased can be experimentally ascertained. The principal, and many of the smaller towns of Britain are well sup plied with public nurseries, which is the case also in many countries of continental Europe and in North

America.

Some of these nurseries are on a very great scale, as those of Messrs Loddige of London, Elwanger & Barry, Rochester, N. Y., and Parsons, Flushing, Long Island. The largest nurseries, however, are very much devoted to the rearing of ornamental shrubs and trees, and fruit. In G. Britain sive, are now generally made with plants obtained plantations of forest-trees, even when very extenfrom public nurseries. The exertions made by

countries, have contributed much, not only to the nurserymen to obtain new plants from foreign advancement of gardening in its various depart Much benefit also results from the exchange of the ments, and of arboriculture, but also of botany.Thus, bulbous roots are brought to America from produce of the nurseries of different countries. Holland, from what may be described as nurseries specially devoted to them; roses and pear-trees are imported from the nurseries of France, &c. It often happens that seeds imported from climates better crops than those raised in a colder climate or more thoroughly adapted to the plants, produce under a cloudier sky.

NUT, in popular language, is the name given to all those fruits which have the seed enclosed in a bony, woody, or leathery pericarp, not opening when ripe. Amongst the best known and most NURSE, MILITARY. In continental armies, the valuable nuts are the Hazel-nut, Brazil nut, Walnut, 'sisters of charity' usually carry their mission of Chestnut, and Cocoa-nut, all of which are edible. mercy into the military hospitals. Protestant Eng- Other nuts are used in medicine, and for purposes land having no such organisation to fall back upon, connected with the arts. Some of the edible nuts the soldiers have been dependent on the regular abound in a bland oil, which is used for various male hospital attendants for their care during sick-purposes.-In Botany, the term nut (nux) is used to ness, or when suffering from wounds. The Crimean designate a one-celled fruit, with a hardened pericampaign, however, disclosed so melancholy a pic-carp, containing, when mature, only one seed. The ture of the want of women's co-operation, that a band of self-sacrificing ladies, headed by Miss Nightingale (q. v.), proceeded to Turkey, and were soon acknowledged as messengers of health and life by the unfortunate wounded. This experience has been turned to account, and a staff of female nurses has been organised, under the control of a lady styled the Superintendent General of Army

Achenium (q. v.) was by the older botanists generally included in this term. Some of the fruits to which it is popularly applied scarcely receive it as their popular designation. The hazel-nut is an excellent example of the true nut of botanists.-The name nut, without distinctive prefix, is popularly given in Britain to the hazel-nut, but in many parts of Europe to the walnut.

NUTATION-NUT-HATCH.

Many nuts have a considerable commercial value, from mean' right ascension and declination, the from their being favourite articles of food: these former involving, and the latter being freed from are the Hazel-nut and its varieties, the Black the fluctuations arising from nutation. This motion Spanish, the Barcelona, the Smyrna, the Jerusalem is common to all the planets. filbert, and the common filbert; the Walnut, Chestnut, Hickory, and Pecan; the Souari, the Cocoa, and

the Brazil or Para nut.

The Barcelona and Black Spanish, as their names imply, are from Spain; the former is the commonest nut of English shops. About 120,000 bags, averaging 1 bushel each, or 150,000 bushels, are annually imported into Great Britain. The import value is about 15s. per bushel. They are always kiln-dried when received. In 1867, 279,991 bushels of hazel-nuts, valued at £196,998, were imported into Great Britain. The duty, which was reduced in 1853 to 1s. per ton, was abolished in 1862. From the Black Sea Britain receives annually about 68,000 bushels of hazel-nuts, worth 10s. per bushel, with from 500 to 1000 bags of the so-called Jerusalem and Mount Atlas filberts. Of chestnuts from Leghorn, Naples, Spain, France, and Portugal, Britain receives annually about 20,000 bushels. The trade in walnuts is very uncertain, and probably never exceeds 5000 bushels. Of the curious three-cornered or Brazil nut from Para and Maranham, the importation is also very irregular, varying from 300 to 1000 tons, or 1200 to 4000 bushels per annum. About two millions of cocoa-nuts are also imported. The other kinds of nuts are too irregular in their importations to supply any reliable statistics. The annual value of all the nuts imported into Great Britain is computed at £153,000.

NUT-CRACKER (Nucifraga), a genus of birds of the family Corvidae, with a straight conical bill, both mandibles terminating in an obtuse point, and tail nearly square at the end. The form and characters are nearly similar to those of crows, but the habits are rather those of jays. N. columbiana (Wils.), the only American species, inhabits the region west of the Rocky Mountains. It is ashy, with black wings, and

Clark's Nut-cracker (Nucijraga Clarkii).

One species (N. seeds, and is active and noisy. caryocatactes or C. nucifraga) is occasionally seen in Britain, and is not uncommon in many parts of Europe and of Asia, particularly in mountainous regions covered with pines. It is about the size of a jackdaw, but has a longer tail. The N. frequents the tops of high pines, and is a shy bird.

NUTATION is a slight oscillatory movement of the earth's axis, which disturbs the otherwise circular path described by the pole of the earth round is a foot in length. It inhabits high forests, eats that of the ecliptic, known as the 'precession of the equinoxes.' It is produced by the same causes, viz. the attraction of the sun, moon, and planets (the attraction of the last mentioned being so small as to be quite imperceptible) upon the bulging zone about the earth's equator, though in this case it is the moon alone that is the effective agent. It also, for reasons which need not be given here, depends, for the most part, not upon the position of the moon in her orbit, but of the moon's node. If there was no precession of the equinoxes, nutation would appear as a small elliptical motion of the earth's axis, performed in the same time as the moon's nodes take to complete a revolution, the axes of the ellipse being respectively 18"-5 and 13"7, the longer axis being

NUT-HATCH (Sitta), a genus of birds of the family Certhiada, having a straight conical or pris

matic bill, short legs, the hind-toe very strong. They run up and down trees with great agility, movirg with equal ease in either direction, and without hopping, so that the motion is rather like that of a mouse than of a bird. They feed on insects, in pursuit of which they examine the crevices, and remove the scales of the bark; also on seeds, as those of pines, and the kernels of nuts, to obtain which they fasten the nut firmly in some crevice