After the points in hand and crib are reckoned, the cards are shuffled and dealt again, and so on alternately until the game is won.
The highest possible score in hand is 29—three fives and a knave, with a five, of the same suit as the knave, turned up.
CRICCIETH, a watering-place and contributory parliamentary borough of Carnarvonshire, Wales, on Cardigan Bay, served by the Cambrian railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 1406. It is interesting for its high antiquity and the ruined castle, a fortress on an eminence where a neck of land ends, projecting into the sea. Portions of two towers are on the very verge of the rock. A double fosse and vallum, with the outer and inner court lines, can be traced. Apparently British, the castle was repaired later, probably in the time of Edward I. Across the bay is seen Harlech castle, backed by the Merionethshire hills. An old county-family mansion near Criccieth is Gwynfryn (happy hill), the seat of the Nanneys, situated near the stream Dwyfawr and within some 7 m. of Pwllheli. Not far is a tumulus, Tomen fawr. At a distance of 5 m. is Tremadoc (which owes its name. Town of Madocks—as does Portmadoc—to Mr W. Madocks, of Morfa Lodge, who made the embankment here). Criccieth has become a favourite watering-place, as well as a centre of excursions. The neighbourhood is agreeable, and the Cardigan Bay shore is shelving and suitable for safe bathing. Cantref y Gwaelod (the hundred of the bottom) is the Welsh literary name of this bay, on the shores of which geological depression has certainly taken place. Mythical history relates how Seithennin’s drunkenness inundated the land now covered by the bay, and how King Arthur’s ship was wrecked upon Meisdiroedd Enlli near Bardsey. The Mabinogion tell how Harlech was a port. Similarly, in Carnarvon Bay, about 2 m. seaward, at low water, are visible the ruins of Caerarianrhod (fortified town of the silver wheel), a submerged town—due to another geological depression.
CRICHTON, JAMES (1560-? 1582), commonly called the “Admirable Crichton,” was the son of Robert Crichton, lord advocate of Scotland in the reign of Mary and James VI., and of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Stewart of Beath, through whom he claimed royal descent. He was born probably at Eliock in Dumfriesshire in 1560, and when ten years old was sent to St Salvator’s College, St Andrews, where he took his B.A. in 1574 and his M.A. in 1575. In 1577 Crichton was undoubtedly in Paris, but his career on the continent is difficult to follow. That he displayed considerable classical knowledge, was a good linguist, a ready and versatile writer of verse, and above all that he possessed an astounding memory, seems certain, not only from the evidence of men of his own time, but from the fact that even Joseph Scaliger (Prima Scaligerana, p. 58, 1669) speaks of his attainments with the highest praise. But those works of his which have come down to us show few traces of unusual ability; and the laudation of him as a universal genius by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Aldus Manutius requires to be discounted. Urquhart (in his Discovery of a most exquisite jewel) states that while in Paris Crichton successfully held a dispute in the college of Navarre, on any subject and in twelve languages, and that the next day he won a tilting match at the Louvre. There is, however, no contemporary evidence for this, the only certain facts being that for two years Crichton served in the French army, and that in 1579 he arrived in Genoa. The latter event is proved by a Latin address (of no particular merit) to the Doge and Senate entitled Oratio J. Critonii Scoti pro Moderatorum Genuensis Reipubl. electione coram Senatu habita.... (Genoa, 1579). The next year Crichton was in Venice, and won the friendship of Aldus Manutius by his Latin ode In appulsu ad urbem Venetam de Proprio statu J. Critonii Scoti Carmen ad Aldum Manuccium.... (Venice, 1580). The best contemporary evidence for Crichton’s stay in Venice is a handbill printed by the Guerra press in 1580 (and now in the British Museum), giving a short biography and an extravagant eulogy of his powers; he speaks ten languages, has a command of philosophy, theology, mathematics; he improvises Latin verses in all metres and on all subjects, has all Aristotle and his commentators at his fingers’ ends; is of most beautiful appearance, a soldier from top to toe, &c. This work is undoubtedly by Manutius, as it was reprinted with his name in 1581 as Relatione della qualità di ... Crettone, and again in 1582 (reprinted Venice, 1831).
In Venice Crichton met and vanquished all disputants except Giacomo Mazzoni, was followed from place to place by crowds of admirers, and won the affection of the humanists Lorenzo Massa and Giovanni Donati. In March 1581 he went to Padua, where he held two great disputations. In the first he extemporized in succession a Latin poem, a daring onslaught on Aristotelian ignorance, and an oration in praise of ignorance. In the second, which took place in the Church of St John and St Paul, and lasted three days, he undertook to refute innumerable errors in Aristotelians, mathematicians and schoolmen, to conduct his dispute either logically or by the secret doctrine of numbers, &c. According to Aldus, who attended the debate and published an account of it in his dedication to Crichton prefixed to Cicero’s “Paradoxa” (1581), the young Scotsman was completely successful. In June Crichton was once more in Venice, and while there wrote two Latin odes to his friends Lorenzo Massa and Giovanni Donati, but after this date the details of his life are obscure. Urquhart states that he went to Mantua, became the tutor of the young prince of Mantua, Vincenzo di Gonzaga, and was killed by the latter in a street quarrel in 1582. Aldus in his edition of Cicero’s De universitate (1583), dedicated to Crichton, laments the 3rd of July as the fatal day; and this account is apparently confirmed by the Mantuan state papers recently unearthed by Mr Douglas Crichton (Proc. Soc. of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1909). Mr Sidney Lee (Dict. Nat. Biog.) argued against this date, on the ground that in 1584 and 1585 Crichton was alive and in Milan, as certain works of his published in that year testified, and regarded it as probable that he died in Mantua c. 1585/6. But these later works seem to have been by another man of the same name. The epithet “admirable” (admirabilis) for Crichton first occurs in John Johnston’s Heroes Scoti (1603). It is probably impossible to recover the whole truth either as to Crichton’s death or as to the extent of his attainments, which were so quickly elevated into legendary magnitude.
Bibliography.—Sir Thomas Urquhart’s Discovery of a most excellent jewel (1652; reprinted in the Maitland Club’s edition of Urquhart’s Works in 1834) is written with the express purpose of glorifying Scotland. The panegyrics of Aldus Manutius require to be received with some caution, since he was given to exaggerating the merits of his friend, and uses almost the same language about a young Pole named Stanilaus Niegosevski; see John Black’s Life of Torquato Tasso, ii. 413-451 (1810), for a criticism. The Life of Crichton, by P. Fraser Tytler (2nd ed., 1823), contains many extracts from earlier writers; see also “Notices of Sir Robert Crichton of Cluny and of his son James,” by John Stuart, in Proceedings Soc. of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 103-118 (1855); and the article by Andrew Lang, “The death of the Admirable Crichton,” in the Morning Post (London), Feb. 25, 1910. W. Harrison-Ainsworth in his novel Crichton (new ed., 1892) reprints and translates some documents relating to Crichton, as well as some of his poems.
CRICKET (Gryllidae), a family of saltatory Orthopterous Insects, closely related to the Locustidae. The wings when folded form long slender filaments, which often reach beyond the extremity of the body, and give the appearance of a bifid tail, while in the male they are provided with a stridulating apparatus by which the well-known chirping sound, to which the insect owes its name, is produced. The abdomen of the female ends in a long slender ovipositor, which, however, is not exserted in the mole cricket. The house cricket (Gryllus domesticus) is of a greyish-yellow colour marked with brown. It frequents houses, especially in rural districts, where its lively, if somewhat monotonous, chirp may be heard nightly in the neighbourhood of the fireplace. It is particularly fond of warmth, and is thus frequently found in bakeries, where its burrows are often sunk to within a few inches of the oven. In the hot summer it goes out of doors, and frequents the walls of gardens, but returns again to its place by the hearth on the first approach of cold, where, should the heat of the fire be withdrawn, it becomes dormant. It is nocturnal, coming forth at the evening twilight in search of food, which consists of bread crumbs and other refuse of the kitchen. The field cricket (Gryllus campestris) is a larger insect than the former, and of a darker colour. It burrows in the ground to a depth of from 6 to 12 in., and in the evening the male may be observed sitting at the mouth of its hole noisily stridulating until a female approaches, “when,” says Bates, “the louder notes are succeeded by a more subdued tone, whilst the successful musician caresses with his antennae the mate he has won.” The musical apparatus in this species consists of upwards of 130 transverse ridges on the under side of one of the nervures of the wing cover, which are rapidly scraped over a smooth, projecting nervure on the opposite wing. The female deposits her eggs—about 200 in number—on the ground, and when hatched the larvae, which resemble the perfect insect except in the absence of wings, form burrows for themselves in which they pass the winter. The mole cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris) owes its name to the striking analogy in its habits and structure to those of the common mole. Its body is thick and cylindrical in shape, and it burrows by means of its front legs, which are short and greatly flattened out and thickened, with the outer edge partly notched so as somewhat to resemble a hand. It prefers loose and sandy ground in which to dig, its burrow consisting of a vertical shaft from which long horizontal galleries are given off; and in making those excavations it does immense injury to gardens and vineyards by destroying the tender roots of plants, which form its principal food. It also feeds upon other insects, and even upon the weak of its own species in the absence of other food. It is exceedingly fierce and voracious, and is usually caught by inserting a stem of grass into its hole, which being seized, is retained till the insect is brought to the surface. The female deposits her eggs in a neatly constructed subterranean chamber, about the size of a hen’s egg, and sufficiently near the surface to allow of the eggs being hatched by the heat of the sun.