(W. M. R.)
DOLDRUMS (a slang term, dol = dull; cf. tantrum), the region of calms near the equator where the trade-winds die away, a region of constant precipitation in which the weather is close, hot, vaporous and extremely dispiriting. In the old days of sailing vessels, a becalmed ship sometimes lay helpless for weeks. A letter from this region saying “we are in the doldrums” (“in the dumps”) seems to have been regarded as written from “The Doldrums,” which thus became the name of this undesirable locality.
DÔLE, a town of eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Jura, 29 m. S.E. of Dijon on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 11,166. It occupies the slope of a hill overlooking the forest of Chaux, on the right bank of the Doubs, and of the canal from the Rhone to the Rhine which accompanies that river. The streets, which in general are steep and narrow, contain many old houses recalling, in their architecture, the Spanish occupation of the town. The principal buildings are the church of Notre Dame, a Gothic structure of the 16th century; the college, once a Jesuit establishment, which contains the library and a museum of paintings and has a chapel of the Renaissance period; the Hôtel-Dieu and hôtel de ville, both 17th-century buildings; and the law court occupying an old convent of the Cordeliers. In the courtyard of the hôtel de ville there stands an old tower dating from the 15th century. The birth of Louis Pasteur (1822) in the town is commemorated by a monument, and there is also a monument to Jules Grévy. Dôle is the seat of a sub-prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce and a communal college. Metal-founding and the manufacture of fire-pumps, kitchen-ranges and other iron goods, chemical products, machinery, leather, liqueurs and pastry, are among the industries. There is a good trade in agricultural produce and live stock, and in wood, iron, coal and the stone of the vicinity. Wine is largely grown in the district.
Dôle, the ancient Dola, was in Roman times the meeting place of several roads, and considerable remains have been found there; in the later middle ages and till 1648 it was the capital of Franche Comté and seat of a parlement and a university; but in the year 1479 the town was taken by the forces of Louis XI., and so completely sacked that only the house of Jean Vurry, as it is still called, and two other buildings were left standing. It subsequently came into the hands of Maximilian of Austria, and in 1530 was fortified by Charles V. In 1668 and 1674 it was captured by the French and lost its parlement and its university, both of which were transferred by Louis XIV. to Besançon.
DOLE (from Old Eng. dal, cf. mod. “deal”), a portion, a distribution of gifts, especially of food and money given in charity. The derivation from O. Fr. doel, Late Lat. dolium, “grief,” suggested by the custom of funeral doles, is wrong. In early Christian days, St Chrysostom says: “doles were used at funerals to procure the rest of the soul of the deceased, that he might find his judge propitious.” The distribution of alms to the local poor at funerals was a universal custom in the middle ages. The amount of doles was usually stated in the will. Thus in 1399 Eleanor, duchess of Gloucester, ordered that fifteen poor men should carry torches at her funeral, “each having a gown and hood lined with white, breeches of blue cloth, shoes and a shirt, and twenty pounds amongst them.” Later doles usually took the form of bequests of land or money, the interest or rent of which was to be annually employed in charity. Often the distribution took place at the grave of the donor. Thus one William Robinson of Hull at his death in 1708 left money to buy annually a dozen loaves, costing a shilling each, to be given to twelve poor widows at his grave every Christmas. Lenten doles were also formerly common. A will of 1537 bade a barrel of white herrings and a case of red herrings be given yearly to the poor of Clavering, Essex, to help them tide over the fast. One or two London doles are still distributed, e.g. that of St Peter’s, Walworth, where a Christmas dinner is each year served to 300 parish poor in the crypt. No one under sixty is eligible, and the dinner is unique in that it is cooked in the church. A pilgrim’s dole of bread and ale can be claimed by all wayfarers at the Hospital of St Cross, Winchester. This is said to have been founded by William of Wykeham. Emerson, when visiting Winchester, claimed and received the dole. What were known as Scrambling Doles, so called because the meat and bread distributed were thrown among the poor to be scrambled for, were not uncommon in England. Such a dole existed at St Briavel’s, Gloucestershire, baskets of bread and cheese cut into small squares being thrown by the churchwardens from the gallery into the body of the church on Whit Sunday. At Wath near Ripon a testator in 1810 ordered that forty penny loaves should be thrown from the church leads at midnight on every Christmas eve. The best known dole in the United States is the “Leake Dole of Bread.” John Leake, a millionaire dying in 1792, left £1000 to Trinity Church, New York, the income to be laid out in wheaten loaves and distributed every Sabbath morning after service. The dole still survives, though the day has been altered to Saturday, each week sixty-seven loaves being given away.
DOLERITE (from Gr. δολερός, deceptive), in petrology, the name given by Haüy to those basaltic rocks which are comparatively coarse grained and nearly, if not quite, holocrystalline. As may be inferred from their highly crystalline state they are very often intrusive, and occur as dikes and sills, but many of them form lava flows. Their essential minerals are those of basalt, viz. olivine, augite and plagioclase felspar, while hornblende, ilmenite, apatite and biotite are their commonest accessory ingredients. The chemical and microscopic features of these minerals agree generally with those presented in the basalts, and only their exceptional peculiarities need be mentioned here. Many dolerites are porphyritic and carry phenocrysts of olivine, augite and plagioclase felspar (or of one or more of these). Others, probably the majority, are non-porphyritic, and these are generally coarser grained than the ground-mass of the former group, though lacking their large conspicuous phenocrysts. The commonest type of structure in dolerite is the ophitic, which results from the felspar of the rock having crystallized before the augite; the latter mineral forms shapeless masses in which the idiomorphic felspars lie. The augite enclosing the felspars is well crystallized, though its continuity is interrupted more or less completely by the numerous crystals of felspar which it envelops, and in polarized light the former often behaves as a single individual over a considerable area, while the latter mineral consists of independent crystals. This structure may be so coarse as to be easily detected by the unaided eye, or so fine that it cannot be seen except in microscopic sections. Some of the porphyritic dolerites have ophitic ground-masses; in others this structure is imperfect (subophitic); while in many the augite, like the felspar, occurs as small and distinct individuals, which react differently on polarized light, and have the outlines of more or less perfectly shaped crystals. Ophitic structure is commonest in olivine-dolerites, though the olivine takes no part in it.