COTGRAVE, RANDLE (?-1634), English lexicographer, came of a Cheshire family, and was educated at Cambridge, entering St John’s College in 1587. He became secretary to Lord Burghley, and in 1611 published his French-English dictionary (2nd ed., 1632), a work of real historical importance in lexicography, and still valuable in spite of such errors as were due to contemporary want of exact scholarship.
CÖTHEN, or Köthen, a town of Germany, in the duchy of Anhalt on the Ziethe, at the junction of several railway lines, 42 m. N.W. of Leipzig by rail. Pop. (1905) 22,978. It consists of an old and a new town with four suburbs. The former palace of the dukes of Anhalt-Cöthen, in the old town, has fine gardens and contains collections of pictures and coins, the famous ornithological collection of Johann Friedrich Naumann (1780-1857), and a library of some 20,000 volumes. Of the churches the Lutheran Jakobskirche (called the cathedral), a Gothic building with some fine old stained glass, is noteworthy. Besides the usual classical and modern schools (Gymnasium and Realschule) Cöthen possesses a technical institute, a school of gardening and a school of forestry. The industries include iron-founding and the manufacture of agricultural and other machinery, malt, beet-root sugar, leather, spirits, &c.; a tolerably active trade is carried on in grain, wool, potatoes and vegetables. Among others, there is a monument to Sebastian Bach, who was music director here from 1717 to 1723.
In the 10th century Cöthen was a Slav settlement, which was captured and destroyed by the German king Henry I. in 927. By the 12th century it had secured town rights and become a considerable centre of trade in agricultural produce. In 1300 it was burned by the margrave of Meissen. In 1547 the town was taken from its prince, Wolfgang (a cadet of the house of Anhalt), who had joined the league of Schmalkalden, and given by the emperor Charles V., with the rest of the prince’s possessions, to the Spanish general and painter, Felipe Ladron y Guevara (1510-1563), from whom it was, however, soon repurchased. Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, lived and worked in Cöthen. From 1603 to 1847 Cöthen was the capital of the principality, later duchy, of Anhalt-Cöthen.
COTMAN, JOHN SELL (1782-1842), English landscape-painter and etcher, son of a well-to-do silk mercer, was born at Norwich on the 16th of May 1782. He showed a talent for art and was sent to London to study, where he became the friend of Turner, T. Girtin and other artists. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800. In 1807 he went back to Norwich and joined the Norwich Society of Artists, of which in 1811 he became president. In 1825 he was made an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-colours; in 1834 he was appointed drawing-master at King’s College, London; and in 1836 he was elected a member of the Institute of British Architects. He died in London on the 24th of July 1842. Cotman’s work was not considered of much importance in his own day, and his pictures only procured small prices; but he now ranks as one of the great figures of the Norwich school. He was a fine draughtsman, and a remarkable painter both in oil and water-colour. One of his paintings is in the National Gallery. His fine architectural etchings, published in a series of volumes, the result of tours in Norfolk and Normandy, are valuable records of his interest in archaeology. He married early in life, and had five children, his sons, Miles Edmund (1810-1858) and Joseph John (1814-1878), both becoming landscape-painters of merit; and his younger brother Henry’s son, Frederic George Cotman (b. 1850), the water-colour artist, continued the family reputation.
COTONEASTER, a genus of the rose family (Rosaceae), containing about twenty species of shrubs and small trees, natives of Europe, North Africa and temperate Asia. C. vulgaris is native on the limestone cliffs of the Great Orme in North Wales. Several species are grown in shrubberies and borders, or as wall plants, mainly for their clusters of bright red or yellow berry-like fruits. Plants are easily raised by seeds, cuttings or layers, and grow well in ordinary soil.
COTOPAXI, a mountain of the Andes, in Ecuador, South America, 35 m. S.S.E. of Quito, remarkable as the loftiest active volcano in the world. The earliest outbursts on record took place in 1532 and 1533; and since then the eruptions have been both numerous and destructive. Among the most important are those of 1744, 1746, 1766, 1768 and 1803. In 1744 the thunderings of the volcano were heard at Honda on the Rio Magdalena, about 500 m. distant; in 1768 the quantity of ashes ejected was so great that it covered all the lesser vegetation as far as Riobamba; and in 1803 Humboldt reports that at the port of Guayaquil, 160 m. from the crater, he heard the noise day and night like continued discharges of a battery. There were considerable outbursts in 1851, 1855, 1856, 1864 and 1877. In 1802 Humboldt made a vain attempt to scale the cone, and pronounced the enterprise impossible; and the failure of Jean Baptiste Boussingault in 1831, and the double failure of M. Wagner in 1858, seemed to confirm his opinion. In 1872, however, Dr Wilhelm Reiss succeeded on the 27th and 28th of November in reaching the top; in the May of the following year the same feat was accomplished by Dr A. Stübel, and he was followed by T. Wolf in 1877, M. von Thielmann in 1878 and Edward Whymper in 1880.