COLE, VICAT (1833-1893), English painter, born at Portsmouth on the 17th of April 1833, was the son of the landscape painter, George Cole, and in his practice followed his father’s lead with marked success. He exhibited at the British Institution at the age of nineteen, and was first represented at the Royal Academy in 1853. His election as an associate of this institution took place in 1870, and he became an Academician ten years later. He died in London on the 6th of April 1893. The wide popularity of his work was due partly to the simple directness of his technical method, and partly to his habitual choice of attractive material. Most of his subjects were found in the counties of Surrey and Sussex, and along the banks of the Thames. One of his largest pictures, “The Pool of London,” was bought by the Chantrey Fund Trustees in 1888, and is now in the Tate Gallery.
See Robert Chignell, The Life and Paintings of Vicat Cole, R.A. (London, 1899).
COLEBROOKE, HENRY THOMAS (1765-1837), English Orientalist, the third son of Sir George Colebrooke, 2nd baronet, was born in London on the 15th of June 1765. He was educated at home; and when only fifteen he had made considerable attainments in classics and mathematics. From the age of twelve to sixteen he resided in France, and in 1782 was appointed to a writership in India. About a year after his arrival there he was placed in the board of accounts in Calcutta; and three years later he was removed to a situation in the revenue department at Tirhut. In 1789 he was removed to Purneah, where he investigated the resources of that part of the country, and published his Remarks on the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal, privately printed in 1795, in which he advocated free trade between Great Britain and India. After eleven years’ residence in India, Colebrooke began the study of Sanskrit; and to him was confided the translation of the great Digest of Hindu Laws, which had been left unfinished by Sir William Jones. He translated the two treatises Mitacshara and Dayabhaga under the title Law of Inheritance. He was sent to Nagpur in 1799 on a special mission, and on his return was made a judge of the new court of appeal, over which he afterwards presided. In 1805 Lord Wellesley appointed him professor of Hindu Law and Sanskrit at the college of Fort William. During his residence at Calcutta he wrote his Sanskrit Grammar (1805), some papers on the religious ceremonies of the Hindus, and his Essay on the Vedas (1805), for a long time the standard work on the subject. He became member of council in 1807 and returned to England seven years later. He died on the 18th of March 1837. He was a director of the Asiatic Society, and many of the most valuable papers in the society’s Transactions were communicated by him.
His life was written by his son, Sir T. E. Colebrooke, in 1873.
COLEMANITE, a hydrous calcium borate, Ca2B6O11 + 5H2O, found in California as brilliant monoclinic crystals. It contains 50.9% of boron trioxide, and is an important source of commercial borates and boracic acid. Beautifully developed crystals, up to 2 or 3 in. in length, encrust cavities in compact, white colemanite; they are colourless and transparent, and the brilliant lustre of their faces is vitreous to adamantine in character. There is a perfect cleavage parallel to the plane of symmetry of the crystals. Hardness 4-4½; specific gravity 2.42. The mineral was first discovered in 1882 in Death Valley, Inyo county, California, and in the following year it was found in greater abundance near Daggett in San Bernardino county, forming with other borates and borosilicates a bed in sedimentary strata of sandstones and clays; in more recent years very large masses have been found and worked in these localities, and also in Los Angeles county (see Special Report, 1905, of U.S. Census Bureau on Mines and Quarries; and Mineral Resources of the U.S., 1907).
Priceite and pandermite are hydrous calcium borates with very nearly the same composition as colemanite, and they may really be only impure forms of this species. They are massive white minerals, the former friable and chalk-like, and the latter firm and compact in texture. Priceite occurs near Chetco in Curry county, Oregon, where it forms layers between a bed of slate and one of tough blue steatite; embedded in the steatite are rounded masses of priceite varying in size from that of a pea to masses weighing 200 ℔. Pandermite comes from Asia Minor, and is shipped from the port of Panderma on the Sea of Marmora: it occurs as large nodules, up to a ton in weight, beneath a thick bed of gypsum.
Another borate of commercial importance found abundantly in the Californian deposits is ulexite, also known as boronatrocalcite or “cotton-ball,” a hydrous calcium and sodium borate, CaNaB5O9 + 8H2O, which forms rounded masses consisting of a loose aggregate of fine fibres. It is the principal species in the borate deposits in the Atacama region of South America.
(L. J. S.)