[1] This peculiarity is found as an accidental malformation in the crows (Corvidae) and other groups; it is comparable to the monstrosities seen in rabbits and other members of the order Glires, in which the incisor teeth grow to an inordinate length.
[2] A medieval legend ascribes the conformation of bill and coloration of plumage to a divine recognition of the bird’s pity, bestowed on Christ at the crucifixion.
[3] Dr Malmgren found a small flock on Bear Island (lat. 74½° N.), but to this barren spot they must have been driven by stress of weather.
CROSSEN, or Krossen, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Prussia, on the Oder, here crossed by a bridge, at the influx of the Bober, 31 m. S.E. of Frankfort-on-Oder by rail. Pop. (1900) 7369. Of the churches in the town three are Protestant and one Roman Catholic. Besides the modern school (Realprogymnasium), there are a technical school for viniculture and fruit-growing and a dairy school. There are manufactories of copper and brass ware, cloth, &c., while in the surrounding country the chief industries are fruit and grape growing. There is a brisk shipping trade, mainly in wine, fruit and fish. Crossen was founded in 1005 and was important during the middle ages as a point of passage across the Oder. It attained civic rights in 1232, was for a time the capital of a Silesian duchy, which, on the death of Barbara of Brandenburg, widow of the last duke, passed to Brandenburg (1482). In May 1886 the town was devastated by a whirlwind.
CROSSING, in architecture, the term given to the intersection of the nave and transept, frequently surmounted by a tower or by a dome on pendentives.
CROSSKEY, HENRY WILLIAM (1826-1893), English geologist and Unitarian minister, was born at Lewes in Sussex, on the 7th of December 1826. After being trained for the ministry at Manchester New College (1843-1848), he became pastor of Friargate chapel, Derby, until 1852, when he accepted charge of a Unitarian congregation in Glasgow. In 1869 he removed to Birmingham, where until the close of his life he was pastor of the Church of the Messiah. While in Glasgow his interest was awakened in geology by the perusal of A. C. Ramsay’s Geology of the Isle of Arran, and from 1855 onwards he devoted his leisure to the pursuit of this science. He became an authority on glacial geology, and wrote much, especially in conjunction with David Robertson, on the post-tertiary fossiliferous beds of Scotland (Trans. Geol. Soc. Glasgow). He also prepared for the British Association a valuable series of Reports (1873-1892) on the erratic Blocks of England, Wales and Ireland. In conjunction with David Robertson and G. S. Brady he wrote the Monograph of the Post Tertiary Entomostraca of Scotland, &c. for the Palaeontographical Society (1874); and he edited H. Carvill Lewis’ Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland, issued posthumously (1894). He died at Edgbaston, Birmingham, on the 1st of October 1893.