CULLEN, a royal, municipal and police burgh of Banffshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 1936. It is situated on Cullen Bay, 11½ m. W. by N. of Banff and 66½ m. N.W. of Aberdeen by the Great North of Scotland railway. Deskford Burn, after a course of 7½ m., enters the sea at Cullen, which it divides into two parts, Seatown, the older, and Newtown, dating only from 1822. St Mary’s, the parish church, a cruciform structure, was founded by Robert Bruce, whose second wife died at Cullen. The industries include rope and sail making, boat-building, brewing and fishing. The harbour, constructed between 1817 and 1834, though artificial, is one of the best on this coast. About 1 m. to the S. is Cullen House, a seat of the earl of Seafield, which contains some fine works of art. A mile and a half to the W. is the picturesque fishing village of Port Knockie with a deep-sea harbour, built in 1891. On the cliffs, 2 m. to the E., stand the ruins of Findlater Castle, fortified in 1455. From 1638 to 1811, when the title expired, it gave the title of earl to the Ogilvies, whose name was adopted in addition to his own by Sir Lewis Alexander Grant, when he succeeded, as 5th earl of Seafield, to the surviving dignities. Five miles to the E. of Cullen is the thriving fishing town of Portsoy, with a small, safe harbour and a station on the Great North of Scotland railway. Besides the fisheries there is fish-curing and a distillery; and the quarrying of a pink-coloured variety of granite and of Portsoy marble is carried on. Good limestone is also found in the district. Pop. (1901) 2061.
CULLERA, a seaport of eastern Spain, in the province of Valencia; on the Mediterranean Sea, at the mouth of the river Jucar, and at the southern terminus of the Valencia-Silla-Cullera railway. Pop. (1900) 11,947. Cullera is a walled town, containing a ruined Moorish citadel, large barracks, several churches and convents and a hospital. It occupies the Jucar valley, south of the Sierra de Zorras, a low range of hills which terminates eastward in Cape Cullera, a conspicuous headland surmounted by a lighthouse. To the south and west extends a rich agricultural district, noted for its rice. Besides farming and fishing, the inhabitants carry on a coasting trade with various Mediterranean ports. In 1903 the harbour was entered by 66 vessels of about 25,000 tons, engaged in the exportation of grain, rice and fruit, and the importation of guano. The town of Sueca (q.v.) is 4 m. W.N.W. by rail.
CULLINAN, a town of the Transvaal, 36 m. by rail E. by N. of Pretoria. It grew up round the Premier diamond mine and dates from 1903, being named after T. Cullinan, the purchaser of the ground on which the mine is situated. Here was discovered in January 1905 a diamond—the largest on record—weighing 3025¾ carats. This diamond was in 1907 presented by the Transvaal government to Edward VII. and was subsequently cut into two stones, one of 516½ carats, the other of 309 carats, intended to ornament the sceptre and crown of England. The “chippings” yielded several smaller diamonds (see [Diamond]).
CULLODEN, a desolate tract of moorland, Inverness-shire, Scotland. It forms part of the north-east of Drummossie Muir, and is situated about 6 m. by road E. of Inverness, and ½ m. from Culloden Muir station on the Highland railway from Aviemore to Inverness via Daviot. It is celebrated as the scene of the battle of the 16th of April 1746 (see [Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke of], and [Murray, Lord George]), by which the fate of the house of Stuart was decided. By Highlanders the battle is more generally described as the battle of Drummossie. Memorial stones bearing the names of the clans engaged in the conflict were erected in 1881 at the head of each trench where the clansmen—about 1000 in number—were buried. A monumental cairn, 20 ft. high, marks the chief scene of the fight, and the Cumberland Stone, a huge boulder, indicates the spot where the English commander took up his position. A mile to the north is Culloden House, which belonged to Duncan Forbes, the president of the Court of Session. The Culloden Papers, a number of historical documents ranging from 1625 to 1748, were discovered in this mansion in 1812 and published in 1815 by Duncan George Forbes. On the death of the 10th laird, the collection of Jacobite relics and works of art was sold by auction in 1897. About 1 m. to the south of the field, on the right bank of the Nairn, is the plain of Clava, containing several stone circles, monoliths, cairns and other prehistoric remains. The circles, some apparently never completed, vary in circumference from 12 yds. to 140 yds.
CULM, in geology, the name applied to a peculiar local phase of the Carboniferous system. In 1837 A. Sedgwick and R. I. Murchison classified into two divisions the dark shales, grits and impure limestones which occupy a large area in Devonshire and extend into the neighbouring counties of Somerset and Cornwall. These two divisions were the Upper and Lower Culm Measures, so named from certain impure coals, locally called “culm,”[1] contained within the shales near Bideford. Subsequently, these two geologists, when prosecuting their researches in Germany and Austria, applied the same name to similar rocks which contained, amongst others, Posidonomya Becheri, common to the phase of sedimentation in both areas.