By the loss of the third lower molar and certain modifications of the other teeth and skull, the Miocene genus Plesictis may be derived from Cynodictis, its dental formula being i. 3⁄3, c. 1⁄1, p. 4⁄4, m. 1 or 2⁄2. Now Plesictis is nothing more than a generalized representative of the Mustelidae. We have thus traced three out of the four modern arctoid families to the Cynodictis-type. The Procyonidae, or fourth family (apart from the Asiatic Aelurus and Aeluropus) are connected with the last-named genus through the North American Oligocene Phlaeocyon, which is stated to be in almost every respect intermediate between Procyon and Cynodictis while the living Bassariscus is stated to show closer signs of affinity with Cynodictis than with Phlaeocyon.
To deal with fossil representatives of living genera, or extinct genera nearly related to groups still existing, would here be impracticable. It may be stated, however, that aberrant groups like the otters are linked up with more normal types by means of extinct forms (in this particular instance by the Miocene Potamotherium), so that the gaps in the phylogeny of the Carnivora are comparatively few.
Literature.—The above article is based on that by Sir W.H. Flower in the 9th edition of this Encyclopaedia. The principal works on Carnivora are the following: W.H. Flower, “On the Value of the Base of the Cranium in the Classification of the Carnivora,” Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1869; T.H. Huxley, “Cranial and Dental Characters of the Canidae,” Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1880; St G. Mivart, “On the Classification and Distribution of the Aeluroidea ... and Arctoidea”, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1882 and 1885; E.R. Lankester, “On the Affinities of Aeluropus,” Trans. Linn. Soc. London, vol. viii. part iv., 1901; Miss A. Carlsson, “Über die systematische Stellung von Nandinia,” Zool. Jahrb. Syst., vol. xiii., 1900, and “Ist Otocyon die Ausgangsform des Hundegeschlechts oder nicht?” op. cit. vol. xxii., 1905; J.L. Wortman and W.D. Matthew, “The Ancestry of Certain Members of the Canidae, Viverridae, and Procyonidae,” Bull. Amer. Mus., vol. xii., 1899.
(R. L.*)
CARNOT, LAZARE HIPPOLYTE (1801-1888), French statesman, the second son of L.N.M. Carnot (q.v.), was born at Saint-Omer on the 6th of October 1801. Hippolyte Carnot lived at first in exile with his father, returning to France only in 1823. Unable then to enter active political life, he turned to literature and philosophy, publishing in 1828 a collection of Chants helléniques translated from the German of W. Müller, and in 1830 an Exposé de la doctrine Saint-Simonienne, and collaborating in the Saint-Simonian journal Le Producteur. He also paid several visits to England and travelled in other countries of Europe. In March 1839, after the dissolution of the chamber by Louis Philippe, he was elected deputy for Paris (re-elected in 1842 and in 1846), and sat in the group of the Radical Left, being one of the leaders of the party hostile to Louis Philippe. On the 24th of February 1848 he pronounced in favour of the republic. Lamartine chose him as minister of education in the provisional government, Carnot set to work to organize the primary school systems, proposing a law for obligatory and free primary instruction, and another for the secondary education of girls. But he declared himself against purely secular schools, holding that “the minister and the schoolmaster are the two columns on which rests the edifice of the republic.” By this attitude he alienated both the Right and the Republicans of the Extreme Left, and was forced to resign on the 5th of July 1848. He was one of those who protested against the coup d’état of the 2nd of December 1851, but was not proscribed by Louis Napoleon. He refused to sit in the Corps Législatif until 1864, in order not to have to take the oath to the emperor. From 1864 to 1869 he was in the republican opposition, taking a very active part. He was defeated at the election of 1869. On the 8th of February 1871 he was named deputy for the Seine et Oise, and participated in the drawing up of the Constitutional Laws of 1875. On the 16th of December 1875, he was named by the National Assembly senator for life. He died on the 16th of March 1888, three months after the election of his elder son, M.F.S. Carnot (q.v.), to the presidency of the republic. He had published Le Ministère de l’instruction publique et des cultes du 24e février au 5e juillet 1848, (1849), Mémoires sur Lazare Carnot (2 vols., 1861-1864), Mémoires de Barère (with David Angers, 4 vols., 1842-1843). His second son, Marie Adolphe Carnot (b. 1839), became a distinguished mining-engineer and director of the École des Mines (1899), his studies in analytical chemistry placing him in the front rank of French scientists. He was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1895.
See Vermorel, Les Hommes de 1848, (3rd ed., 1869); E. Spuller, Histoire parlementaire de la Seconde République (1891); P. de la Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire (1894 et seq.).
CARNOT, LAZARE NICOLAS MARGUERITE (1753-1823), French general, was born at Nolay in Burgundy in 1753. He received his training as an engineer at Mézières, becoming an officer of the Corps de Génie in 1773 and a captain ten years later. He had then just published his first work, an Essai sur les machines en général. In 1784 he wrote an essay on balloons, and his. Éloge of Vauban, read by him publicly, won him the commendation of Prince Henry of Prussia. But as the result of a controversy with Montalembert, Carnot abandoned the official, or Vauban, theories of the art of fortification, and went over to the “perpendicular” school of Montalembert. He was consequently imprisoned, on the pretext of having fought a duel, and only released when selected to accompany Prince Henry of Prussia in a visit to Vauban’s fortifications. In 1791 he married. The Revolution drew him into political life, and he was elected a deputy for the Pas de Calais. In the Assembly he took a prominent part in debates connected with the army. Carnot was a stern and sincere republican, and voted for the execution of the king. In the campaigns of 1792 and 1793 he was continually employed as a commissioner in military matters, his greatest service being in April 1793 on the north-eastern frontier, where the disastrous battle of Neerwinden and the subsequent defection of Dumouriez had thrown everything into confusion. After doing what was possible to infuse energy into the operations of the French forces, he returned to Paris and was made a member of the Committee of Public Safety. He was charged with duties corresponding to those of the modern chief of the general staff and adjutant-general. As a member of the committee he signed its decrees and was thus at least technically responsible for the acts of the Reign of Terror. His energies were, however, directed to the organization, not yet of victory, but of defence. His labours were incessant; practically every military document in the archives of the committee was Carnot’s own work, and he was repeatedly in the field with the armies. His part in Jourdan’s great victory at Wattignies was so important that the credit of the day has often been assigned to Carnot. The winter of 1793-1794 was spent in new preparations, in instituting a severe discipline in the new and ill-trained troops of the republic, and in improvising means and material of war. He continued to visit the armies at the front, and to inspire them with energy. He acquiesced in the fall of Robespierre in 1794, but later defended Barère and others among his colleagues, declaring that he himself had constantly signed papers without reading them, as it was physically impossible to do so in the press of business. When Carnot’s arrest was demanded in May 1795, a deputy cried “Will you dare to lay hands on the man who has organized victory?” Carnot had just accepted promotion to the rank of major in the engineers. Throughout 1793, when he had been the soul of the national defence, and 1794, in which year he had “organized victory” in fourteen armies, he was a simple captain.
Carnot was elected one of the five Directors in November 1795, and continued to direct the war department during the campaign of 1796. Late in 1796 he was made a member (1st class) of the Institute, which he had helped to establish. He was for two periods president of the Directory, but on the coup d’état of the 18th Fructidor (1797) was forced to take refuge abroad. He returned to France after the 18th Brumaire (1799) and was re-elected to the Institute in 1800. Early in 1800 he became minister of war, and he accompanied Moreau in the early part of the Rhine campaign. His chief work was, however, in reducing the expenses of the armies. Contrary to the usual custom he refused to receive presents from contractors, and he effected much-needed reforms in every part of the military administration. He tendered his resignation later in the year, but it was long before the First Consul would accept it. From 1801 he lived in retirement with his family, employing himself chiefly in scientific pursuits. As a senator he consistently opposed the increasing monarchism of Napoleon, who, however, gave him in 1809 a pension and commissioned him to write a work on fortification for the school of Metz. In these years he had published De la corrélation des figures de géométrie (1801), Géométrie de position (1803), and Principes fondamentaux de l’équilibre et du mouvement (1803), all of which were translated into German. His great work on fortification appeared at Paris in 1810 (De la défense de places fortes) and was translated for the use of almost every army in Europe. He took Montalembert as his ground-work. Without sharing Montalembert’s antipathy to the bastioned trace, and his predilection for high masonry caponiers, he followed out the principle of retarding the development of the attack, and provided for the most active defence. To facilitate sorties in great force he did away with a counterscarp wall, providing instead a long gentle slope from the bottom of the ditch to the crest of the glacis. This, he imagined, would compel an assailant to maintain large forces in the advanced trenches, which he proposed to attack by vertical fire from mortars. Along the front of his fortress was built a heavy detached wall, loop-holed for fire, and sufficiently high to be a most formidable obstacle. This “Carnot wall,” and, in general, Carnot’s principle of active defence, played a great part in the rise of modern fortification.