THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME VII SLICE VIII
Cube to Daguerre, Louis

Articles in This Slice

CUBE (Gr. κύβος, a cube), in geometry, a solid bounded by six equal squares, so placed that the angle between any pair of adjacent faces is a right angle. This solid played an all-important part in the geometry and cosmology of the Greeks. Plato (Timaeus) described the figure in the following terms:—“The isosceles triangle which has its vertical angle a right angle ... combined in sets of four, with the right angles meeting at the centre, form a single square. Six of these squares joined together formed eight solid angles, each produced by three plane right angles: and the shape of the body thus formed was cubical, having six square planes for its surfaces.” In his cosmology Plato assigned this solid to “earth,” for “‘earth’ is the least mobile of the four (elements—‘fire,’ ‘water,’ ‘air’ and ‘earth’) and most plastic of bodies: and that substance must possess this nature in the highest degree which has its bases most stable.” The mensuration of the cube, and its relations to other geometrical solids are treated in the article [Polyhedron]; in the same article are treated the Archimedean solids, the truncated and snub-cube; reference should be made to the article [Crystallography] for its significance as a crystal form.

A famous problem concerning the cube, namely, to construct a cube of twice the volume of a given cube, was attacked with great vigour by the Pythagoreans, Sophists and Platonists. It became known as the “Delian problem” or the “problem of the duplication of the cube,” and ranks in historical importance with the problems of “trisecting an angle” and “squaring the circle.” The origin of the problem is open to conjecture. The Pythagorean discovery of “squaring a square,” i.e. constructing a square of twice the area of a given square (which follows as a corollary to the Pythagorean property of a right-angled triangle, viz. the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares on the sides), may have suggested the strictly analogous problem of doubling a cube. Eratosthenes (c. 200 B.C.), however, gives a picturesque origin to the problem. In a letter to Ptolemy Euergetes he narrates the history of the problem. The Delians, suffering a dire pestilence, consulted their oracles, and were ordered to double the volume of the altar to their tutelary god, Apollo. An altar was built having an edge double the length of the original; but the plague was unabated, the oracles not having been obeyed. The error was discovered, and the Delians applied to Plato for his advice, and Plato referred them to Eudoxus. This story is mere fable, for the problem is far older than Plato.

Hippocrates of Chios (c. 430 B.C.), the discoverer of the square of a lune, showed that the problem reduced to the determination of two mean proportionals between two given lines, one of them being twice the length of the other. Algebraically expressed, if x and y be the required mean proportionals and a, 2a, the lines, we have a : x :: x : y :: y : 2a, from which it follows that x³ = 2a³. Although Hippocrates could not determine the proportionals, his statement of the problem in this form was a great advance, for it was perceived that the problem of trisecting an angle was reducible to a similar form which, in the language of algebraic geometry, is to solve geometrically a cubic equation. According to Proclus, a man named Hippias, probably Hippias of Elis (c. 460 B.C.), trisected an angle with a mechanical curve, named the quadratrix (q.v.). Archytas of Tarentum (c. 430 B.C.) solved the problems by means of sections of a half cylinder; according to Eutocius, Menaechmus solved them by means of the intersections of conic sections; and Eudoxus also gave a solution.

All these solutions were condemned by Plato on the ground that they were mechanical and not geometrical, i.e. they were not effected by means of circles and lines. However, no proper geometrical solution, in Plato’s sense, was obtained; in fact it is now generally agreed that, with such a restriction, the problem is insoluble. The pursuit of mechanical methods furnished a stimulus to the study of mechanical loci, for example, the locus of a point carried on a rod which is caused to move according to a definite rule. Thus Nicomedes invented the conchoid (q.v.); Diocles the cissoid (q.v.); Dinostratus studied the quadratrix invented by Hippias; all these curves furnished solutions, as is also the case with the trisectrix, a special form of Pascal’s limaçon (q.v.). These problems were also attacked by the Arabian mathematicians; Tobit ben Korra (836-901) is credited with a solution, while Abul Gud solved it by means of a parabola and an equilateral hyperbola.

In algebra, the “cube” of a quantity is the quantity multiplied by itself twice, i.e. if a be the quantity a × a × a (= a³) is its cube. Similarly the “cube root” of a quantity is another quantity which when multiplied by itself twice gives the original quantity; thus a1/3 is the cube root of a (see [Arithmetic] and [Algebra]). A “cubic equation” is one in which the highest power of the unknown is the cube (see [Equation]); similarly, a “cubic curve” has an equation containing no term of a power higher than the third, the powers of a compound term being added together.

In mensuration, “cubature” is sometimes used to denote the volume of a solid; the word is parallel with “quadrature,” to determine the area of a surface (see [Mensuration]; [Infinitesimal Calculus]).

CUBEBS (Arab. kabábah), the fruit of several species of pepper (Piper), belonging to the natural order Piperaceae. The cubebs of pharmacy are produced by Piper Cubeba, a climbing woody shrub indigenous to south Borneo, Sumatra, Prince of Wales Island and Java. It has round, ash-coloured, smooth branches; lanceolate, or ovate-oblong, somewhat leathery, shining leaves, 4 to 6½ in. long and 1½ to 2 in. broad. Male and female flowers are borne on distinct plants. The fruits are small, globose, about 1⁄5 in. in diameter, and not so large as white pepper; their contracted stalk-like bases are between 1⁄3 and ½ in. in length; and from forty to fifty of them are borne upon a common stem. The cubeb is cultivated in Java and Sumatra, the fruits are gathered before they are ripe, and carefully dried. Commercial cubebs consist of the dried berries, usually with their stalks attached; the pericarp is greyish-brown, or blackish and wrinkled; and the seed, when present, is hard, white and oily. The odour of cubebs is agreeable and aromatic; the taste, pungent, acrid, slightly bitter and persistent. About 15% of a volatile oil is obtained by distilling cubebs with water; after rectification with water, or on keeping, this deposits rhombic crystals of camphor of cubebs, C15H26O; cubebene, the liquid portion, has the formula C15H24. Cubebin, CH2[O]2C6H3·CH:CH·CH2OH, is a crystalline substance existing in cubebs, discovered by Eugène Soubeiran and Capitaine in 1839; it may be prepared from cubebene, or from the pulp left after the distillation of the oil. The drug, along with gum, fatty oils, and malates of magnesium and calcium, contains also about 1% of cubebic acid, and about 6% of a resin.

The dose of the fruit is 30 to 60 grains, and the British Pharmacopoeia contains a tincture with a dose of ½ to 1 drachm. The volatile oil—oleum cubebae—is also official, and is the form in which this drug is most commonly used, the dose being 5 to 20 minims, which may be suspended in mucilage or given after meals in a cachet. The drug has the typical actions of a volatile oil, but exerts some of them in an exceptional degree. Thus it is liable to cause a cutaneous erythema in the course of its excretion by the skin; it has a marked diuretic action; and it is a fairly efficient disinfectant of the urinary passages. Its administration causes the appearance in the urine of a salt of cubebic acid which is precipitated by heat or nitric acid, and is therefore liable to be mistaken for albumin, when these two most common tests for the occurrence of albuminuria are applied. Cubebs is frequently used in the form of cigarettes for asthma, chronic pharyngitis and hay-fever. A small percentage of cubebs is also commonly included in lozenges designed for use in bronchitis, in which the antiseptic and expectoral properties of the drug are useful. But the most important therapeutic application of this drug is in gonorrhoea, where its antiseptic action is of much value. As compared with copaiba in this connexion cubebs has the advantages of being less disagreeable to take and somewhat less likely to disturb the digestive apparatus in prolonged administration. The introduction of the drug into medicine is supposed to have been due to the Arabian physicians in the middle ages. Cubebs were formerly candied and eaten whole, or used ground as a seasoning for meat. Their modern employment in England as a drug dates from 1815. “Cubebae” were purchased in 1284 and 1285 by Lord Clare at 2s. 3d. and 2s. 9d. per ℔ respectively; and in 1307 1 ℔ for the king’s wardrobe cost 9s., a sum representing about £3, 12s. in present value (Rogers, Hist. of Agriculture and Prices, i. 627-628, ii. 544).

A closely allied species, Piper Clusii, produces the African cubebs or West African black-pepper, the berry of which is smoother than that of common cubebs and usually has a curved pedicel. In the 14th century it was imported into Europe from the Grain Coast, under the name of pepper, by merchants of Rouen and Lippe.

CUBICLE (Lat. cubiculum), a small chamber containing a couch or a bed. The small rooms opening into the atrium of a Pompeian house are known as cubicula. In modern English schools “cubicle” is the term given to the separate small bedrooms into which the dormitories are divided, as opposed to the system of large open dormitories.

CUBITT, THOMAS (1788-1855), English builder, was born at Buxton, near Norwich, on the 25th of February 1788. Few men have exhibited greater self-reliance in early life in the pursuit of a successful career. In his nineteenth year, when he was working as a journeyman carpenter, his father died, and he tried to better his position by going on a voyage to India, as captain’s joiner. He returned to London, two years after, in the possession of a small capital, and began business as a carpenter. The growth of his establishment was steady and rapid. He was one of the first to combine several trades in a “builder’s” business; and this very much increased his success. One of the earlier works which gave him reputation was the London Institution in Finsbury Circus; but it is from 1824 that the vast building operations date which identify his name with many splendid ranges of London houses, such as Tavistock, Gordon, Belgrave and Lowndes Squares, and the district of South Belgravia. While these and similar extensive operations were in progress, a financial panic, which proved ruinous to many, was surmounted in his case by a determined spirit and his integrity of character. He took great interest in sanitary measures, and published, for private circulation, a pamphlet on the general drainage of London, the substance of which was afterwards embodied in a letter to The Times; the plan he advocated was subsequently adopted by the conveyance of the sewage matter some distance below London. He advocated the provision of open spaces in the environs of London as places of public recreation, and was one of the originators of Battersea Park, the first of the people’s parks. At a late period he received professionally the recognition of royalty, the palace at Osborne being erected after his designs, and under his superintendence; and in the Life of the Prince Consort he is described by Queen Victoria as one “than whom a better and kinder man did not exist.” In 1851, although he was not identified with the management of the Great Exhibition, he showed the warmest sympathy with its objects, and aided its projectors in many ways, especially in the profitable investment of their surplus funds. Cubitt, when he rose to be a capitalist, never forgot the interests and well-being of his workpeople. He was elected president of the Builders’ Society some time before his death, which took place at his seat Denbies, near Dorking, on the 20th of December 1855.

His son, George Cubitt (1828-  ), who had a long and useful parliamentary career, as Conservative member for West Surrey (1860-1865) and Mid-Surrey (1885-1892), was in 1892 raised to the peerage as Baron Ashcombe.

CUBITT, SIR WILLIAM (1785-1861), English engineer, was born in 1785 at Dilham in Norfolk, where his father was a miller. After serving an apprenticeship of four years (1800-1804) as a joiner and cabinetmaker at Stalham, he became associated with an agricultural-machine maker, named Cook, who resided at Swanton. In 1807 he patented self-regulating sails for windmills, and in 1812 he entered the works of Messrs Ransome of Ipswich, where he soon became chief engineer, and ultimately a partner. Meanwhile, the subject of the employment of criminals had been much in his thoughts; and the result was his introduction of the treadmill about 1818. In 1826 he removed to London, where he gained a very large practice as a civil engineer. Among his works were the Oxford canal, the Birmingham & Liverpool Junction Canal, the improvement of the river Severn, the Bute docks at Cardiff, the Black Sluice drainage and its outfall sluice at Boston harbour, the Middlesborough docks and coal drops in the Tees, and the South-Eastern railway, of which he was chief engineer. The Hanoverian government consulted him about the harbour and docks at Harburg; the water-works of the city of Berlin were constructed under his immediate superintendence; he was asked to report on the construction of the Paris & Lyons railway; and he was consulting engineer for the line from Boulogne to Amiens. Among his later works were two floating landing stages at Liverpool, and the bridge for carrying the London turnpike across the Medway at Rochester. In 1851, when he was president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, he was knighted for his services in connexion with the buildings erected in Hyde Park for the exhibition of that year. He retired from active work in 1858, and died on the 13th of October 1861 at his house on Clapham Common, London. His son, Joseph Cubitt (1811-1872), was trained under him, and was engineer of various railways, including the Great Northern, London, Chatham & Dover, and part of the London & South-Western.

CUCHULINN (Cūchúlinn; pronounced “Coohoollin”), the chief warrior in the Conchobar-Cuchulinn or older heroic (Ulster) cycle of Ireland. The story of his origin is very obscure. The god Lug is represented as having been swallowed in a draught of wine by his mother Dechtire, sister of Conchobar, who was king of Ulster. But it is not unlikely that this story was invented to supersede the account of the incestuous union of Conchobar with his sister, which seems to be hinted at on various occasions. Usually, however, he is styled son of Sualdam, an Ulster warrior who plays a very inferior part in the cycle. His earliest name was Setanta, and he was brought up at Dun Imbrith (Louth). When he was six years of age he announced his intention of going to Conchobar’s court at Emain Macha (Navan Rath near Armagh) to play with the boys there. He defeats all the boys in marvellous fashion and is received as one of their number. Shortly after he kills Culann, the smith’s hound, a huge watch-dog. The smith laments that all his property is of no value now that his watchman is slain, whereupon the young hero offers to guard his domains until a whelp of the hound’s has grown. From this the boy received the name of Cū Chulinn or Culann’s Hound. The next year Cuchulinn receives arms, makes his first foray, and slays the three sons of Necht, redoubtable hereditary foes of the Ulstermen, in the plain of Meath. The men of Ulster decide that Cuchulinn must marry, as all the women of Ireland are in love with him. Chosen envoys fail to find a bride worthy of him after a year’s search, but the hero goes straight to Emer, the daughter of Forgall the Wily, at Lusk (county Dublin). The lady is promised to him if he will go to learn chivalry of Domnall the Soldierly and the amazon Scathach in Alba. After enduring great hardships he goes through the course and leaves a son Connlaech behind in Scotland by another amazon, Aife. On his return he carries off and weds Emer. He is represented as living at Dun Delgan (Dundalk). The greatest of all the hero’s achievements was the defence of the frontier of Ulster against the forces of Medb, queen of Connaught, who had come to carry off the famous Brown Bull of Cualnge (Cooley). The men of Ulster were all suffering from a strange debility, and Cuchulinn had to undertake the defence single-handed from November to February. This was when he was seventeen years of age. The cycle contains a large number of episodes, such as the gaining of the champion’s portion and the tragical death by the warrior’s hand of his own son Connlaech. When he was twenty-seven he met with his end at the hands of Lugaid, son of Cūrōi MacDaire, the famous Munster warrior, and the children of Calatīn Dāna, in revenge for their father’s death (see [Celt]: Irish Literature).

Medieval Christian synchronists make Cuchulinn’s death take place about the beginning of the Christian era. It is not necessary to regard Cuchulinn as a form of the solar hero, as some writers have done. Most, if not all, of his wonderful attributes may be ascribed to the Irish predilection for the grotesque. It is true that Cuchulinn seems to stand in a special relation to the Tuatha De Danann leader, the god Lug, but in primitive societies there is always a tendency to ascribe a divine parentage to men who stand out pre-eminently in prowess beyond their fellows.

See A. Nutt, Cuchulainn, the Irish Achilles (London, 1900); E. Hull, The Cuchullin Saga (London, 1898).

(E. C. Q.)

CUCKOO, or Cuckow, as the word was formerly spelt, the common name of a well-known and often-heard bird, the Cuculus canorus of Linnaeus. In some parts of the United Kingdom it is more frequently called gowk, and it is the Gr. κόκκυξ, the Ital. cuculo or cucco, the Fr. coucou, the Ger. Kuckuk, the Dutch koekkoek, the Dan. kukker or gjög, and the Swed. gök. The oldest English spelling of the name seems to have been cuccu.

No single bird has perhaps so much occupied the attention both of naturalists and of those who are not naturalists, or has had so much written about it, as the common cuckoo, and of no bird perhaps have more idle tales been told. Its strange and, according to the experience of most people, its singular habit of entrusting its offspring to foster-parents is enough to account for much of the interest which has been so long felt in its history; but this habit is shared probably by many of its Old World relatives, as well as in the New World by birds which are not in any degree related to it. The cuckoo is a summer visitant to the whole of Europe, reaching even far within the Arctic circle, and crossing the Mediterranean from its winter quarters in Africa at the end of March or beginning of April. Its arrival is at once proclaimed by the peculiar and in nearly all languages onomatopoeic cry of the cock—a true song in the technical sense of the word, since it is confined to the male sex and to the season of love. In a few days the cock is followed by the hen, and amorous contests between keen and loud-voiced suitors are to be commonly noticed, until the respective pretensions of the rivals are decided. Even by night they are not silent; but as the season advances the song is less frequently heard, and the cuckoo seems rather to avoid observation as much as possible, the more so since whenever it shows itself it is a signal for all the small birds of the neighbourhood to be up in its pursuit, just as though it were a hawk, to which indeed its mode of flight and general appearance give it an undoubted resemblance—a resemblance that misleads some into confounding it with the birds of prey, instead of recognizing it as a harmless if not a beneficial destroyer of hairy caterpillars. Thus pass away some weeks. Towards the middle or end of June its “plain-song” cry alters; it becomes rather hoarser in tone, and its first syllable or note is doubled. Soon after it is no longer heard at all, and by the middle of July an old cuckoo is seldom to be found in the British Islands, though a stray example, or even, but very rarely, two or three in company, may occasionally be seen for a month longer. Of its breeding comparatively few have any personal experience. Yet a diligent search for and peering into the nests of several of the commonest little birds—more especially the pied wagtail (Motacilla lugubris), the titlark (Anthus pratensis), the reed-wren (Acrocephalus streperus), and the hedge-sparrow (Accentor modularis)—will be rewarded by the discovery of the egg of the mysterious stranger which has been surreptitiously introduced, and those who wait till this egg is hatched may be witnesses (as was Edward Jenner in the 18th century) of the murderous eviction of the rightful tenants of the nest by the intruder, who, hoisting them one after another on his broad back, heaves them over to die neglected by their own parents, of whose solicitous care he thus becomes the only object. In this manner he thrives, and, so long as he remains in the country of his birth his wants are anxiously supplied by the victims of his mother’s dupery. The actions of his foster-parents become, when he is full grown, almost ludicrous, for they often have to perch between his shoulders to place in his gaping mouth the delicate morsels he is too indolent or too stupid to take from their bills. Early in September he begins to shift for himself, and then follows the seniors of his kin to more southern climes.

So much caution is used by the hen cuckoo in choosing a nest in which to deposit her egg that the act of insertion has been but seldom witnessed. The nest selected is moreover often so situated, or so built, that it would be an absolute impossibility for a bird of her size to lay her egg therein by sitting upon the fabric as birds commonly do; and there have been a few fortunate observers who have actually seen the deposition of the egg upon the ground by the cuckoo, who, then taking it in her bill, introduces it into the nest. Of these, the earliest in Great Britain seem to have been two Scottish lads, sons of Mr Tripeny, a farmer in Coxmuir, who, as recorded by Macgillivray (Brit. Birds, iii. 130, 131) from information communicated to him by Mr Durham Weir, saw most part of the operation performed, June 24, 1838. But perhaps the most satisfactory evidence on the point is that of Adolf Müller, a forester at Gladenbach in Darmstadt, who says (Zoolog. Garten, 1866, pp. 374, 375) that through a telescope he watched a cuckoo as she laid her egg on a bank, and then conveyed the egg in her bill to a wagtail’s nest. Cuckoos, too, have been not unfrequently shot as they were carrying a cuckoo’s egg, presumably their own, in their bill, and this has probably given rise to the vulgar, but seemingly groundless, belief that they suck the eggs of other kinds of birds. More than this, Mr G. D. Rowley, who had much experience of cuckoos, declares (Ibis, 1865, p. 186) his opinion to be that traces of violence and of a scuffle between the intruder and the owners of the nest at the time of introducing the egg often appear, whence we are led to suppose that the cuckoo ordinarily, when inserting her egg, excites the fury (already stimulated by her hawk-like appearance) of the owners of the nest by turning out one or more of the eggs that may be already laid therein, and thus induces the dupe to brood all the more readily and more strongly what is left to her. Of the assertion that the cuckoo herself takes any interest in the future welfare of the egg she has foisted on her victim, or of its product, there is no good evidence.

But a much more curious assertion has also been made, and one that at first sight appears so incomprehensible as to cause little surprise at the neglect it long encountered. To this currency was first given by Salerne (L’Hist. nat. &c., Paris, 1767, p. 42), who was, however, hardly a believer in it, and it is to the effect, as he was told by an inhabitant of Sologne, that the egg of a cuckoo resembles in colour that of the eggs normally laid by the kind of bird in whose nest it is placed. In 1853 the same notion was prominently and independently brought forward by Dr A. C. E. Baldamus (Naumannia, 1853, pp. 307-325), and in time became known to English ornithologists, most of whom were naturally sceptical as to its truth, since no likeness whatever is ordinarily apparent in the very familiar case of the blue-green egg of the hedge-sparrow and that of the cuckoo, which is so often found beside it.[1] Dr Baldamus based his notion on a series of eggs in his cabinet,[2] a selection from which he figured in illustration of his paper, and, however the thing may be accounted for, it seems impossible to resist, save on one supposition, the force of the testimony these specimens afford. This one supposition is that the eggs have been wrongly ascribed to the cuckoo, and that they are only exceptionally large examples of the eggs of the birds in the nests of which they were found, for it cannot be gainsaid that some such abnormal examples are occasionally to be met with. But it is well known that abnormally large eggs are not only often deficient in depth of colour, but still more often in stoutness of shell. Applying these rough criteria to Dr Baldamus’s series, most of the specimens stood the test very well.

There are some other considerations to be urged. For instance, Herr Braune, a forester at Greiz in the principality of Reuss (Naumannia, tom. cit. pp. 307, 313), shot a hen cuckoo as she was leaving the nest of an icterine warbler (Hypolais icterina). In the oviduct of this cuckoo he found an egg coloured very like that of the warbler, and on looking into the nest he found there an exactly similar egg, which there can be no reasonable doubt had just been laid by that very cuckoo. Moreover, Herr Grunack (Journ. für Orn., 1873, p. 454) afterwards found one of the most abnormally coloured specimens, quite unlike the ordinary egg of the cuckoo, to contain an embryo so fully formed as to show the characteristic zygodactyl feet of the bird, thus proving unquestionably its parentage.

On the other hand, we must bear in mind the numerous instances in which not the least similarity can be traced—as in the not uncommon case of the hedge-sparrow already mentioned, and if we attempt any explanatory hypothesis it must be one that will fit all round. Such an explanation seems to be this. We know that certain kinds of birds resent interference with their nests much less than others, and among them it may be asserted that the hedge-sparrow will patiently submit to various experiments. She will brood with complacency the egg of a redbreast (Erithacus rubecula), so unlike her own, and for aught we know to the contrary may even be colour-blind. In the case of such a species there would be no need of anything further to ensure success—the terror of the nest-owner at seeing her home invaded by a hawk-like giant, and some of her treasures tossed out, would be enough to stir her motherly feelings so deeply that she would without misgiving, if not with joy that something had been spared to her, resume the duty of incubation so soon as the danger was past. But with other species it may be, and doubtless is, different. Here assimilation of the introduced egg to those of the rightful owner may be necessary, for there can hardly be a doubt as to the truth of Dr Baldamus’s theory as to the object of the assimilation being to render the cuckoo’s egg “less easily recognized by the foster-parents as a substituted one.” It is especially desirable to point out that there is not the slightest ground for imagining that the cuckoo, or any other bird, can voluntarily influence the colour of the egg she is about to lay. Over that she can have no control, but its destination she can determine. It would seem also impossible that a cuckoo, having laid an egg, should look at it, and then decide from its appearance in what bird’s nest she should put it. That the colour of an egg-shell can be in some mysterious way affected by the action of external objects on the perceptive faculties of the mother is a notion too wild to be seriously entertained. Consequently, only one explanation of the facts can here be suggested. Every one who has sufficiently studied the habits of animals will admit the influence of heredity. That there is a reasonable probability of each cuckoo most commonly putting her eggs in the nest of the same species of bird, and of this habit being transmitted to her posterity, does not seem to be a very violent supposition. Without attributing any wonderful sagacity to her, it does not seem unlikely that the cuckoo which had once successfully foisted her egg on a reed-wren or a titlark should again seek for another reed-wren’s or another titlark’s nest (as the case may be), when she had another egg to dispose of, and that she should continue her practice from one season to another. It stands on record (Zoologist, 1873, p. 3648) that a pair of wagtails built their nest for eight or nine years running in almost exactly the same spot, and that in each of those years they fostered a young cuckoo, while many other cases of like kind, though not perhaps established on so good authority, are believed to have happened. Such a habit could hardly fail to become hereditary, so that the daughter of a cuckoo which always put her egg into a reed-wren’s, titlark’s or wagtail’s nest would do as did her mother. Furthermore it is unquestionable that, whatever variation there may be among the eggs laid by different individuals of the same species, there is a strong family likeness between the eggs laid by the same individual, even at the interval of many years, and it can hardly be questioned that the eggs of the daughter would more or less resemble those of her mother. Hence the supposition may be fairly credited that the habit of laying a particular style of egg is also likely to become hereditary. Combining this supposition with that as to the cuckoo’s habit of using the nest of the same species becoming hereditary, it will be seen that it requires only an application of the principle of natural selection to show the probability of this principle operating in the course of time to produce the facts asserted by the anonymous Solognot of the 18th century, and by Dr Baldamus and others since. The particular gens of cuckoo which inherited and transmitted the habit of depositing in the nest of any particular species of bird eggs having more or less resemblance to the eggs of that species would prosper most in those members of the gens where the likeness was strongest, and the other members would (ceteris paribus) in time be eliminated. As already shown, it is not to be supposed that all species, or even all individuals of a species, are duped with equal ease. The operation of this kind of natural selection would be most needed in those cases where the species are not easily duped—that is, in those cases which occur the least frequently. Here it is we find it, for observation shows that eggs of the cuckoo deposited in nests of the red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio), of the bunting (Emberiza miliaria), and of the icterine warbler approximate in their colouring to eggs of those species—species in whose nests the cuckoo rarely (in comparison with others) deposits eggs. Of species which are more easily duped, such as the hedge-sparrow, mention has already been made.

More or less nearly allied to the British cuckoo are many other forms of the genus from various parts of Africa, Asia and their islands, while one even reaches Australia. In some cases the chief difference is said to lie in the diversity of voice—a character only to be appreciated by those acquainted with the living birds, and though of course some regard should be paid to this distinction, the possibility of birds using different “dialects” according to the locality they inhabit must make it a slender specific diagnostic. All these forms are believed to have essentially the same habits as the British cuckoo, and, as regards parasitism the same is to be said of the large cuckoo of southern Europe and North Africa (Coccystes glandarius), which victimizes pies (Pica mauritanica and Cyanopica cooki) and crows (Corvus cornix). True it is that an instance of this species, commonly known as the great spotted cuckoo, having built a nest and hatched its young, is on record, but the later observations of others tend to cast doubt on the credibility of the ancient report. It is worthy of remark that the eggs of this bird so closely resemble those of one of the pies in whose nest they have been found, that even expert zoologists have been deceived by them, only to discover the truth when the cuckoo’s embryo had been extracted from the supposed pie’s egg. This species of cuckoo, easily distinguishable by its large size and long crest, has more than once made its appearance as a straggler in the British Isles. Equally parasitic are many other cuckoos, belonging chiefly to genera which have been more or less clearly defined as Cacomantis, Chrysococcyx, Eudynamis, Oxylophus, Polyphasia and Surniculus, and inhabiting parts of the Ethiopian, Indian and Australian regions;[3] but there are certain aberrant forms of Old World cuckoos which unquestionably do not shirk parental responsibilities. Among these especially are the birds placed in or allied to the genera Centropus and Coua—the former having a wide distribution from Egypt to New South Wales, living much on the ground and commonly called lark-heeled cuckoos; the latter bearing no English name, and limited to the island of Madagascar. These build a nest, not perhaps in a highly finished style of architecture, but one that serves its end.

Respecting the cuckoos of America, the evidence, though it has been impugned, is certainly enough to clear them from the charge which attaches to so many of their brethren of the Old World. There are two species very well known in parts of the United States and some of the West Indian Islands (Coccyzus Americanus and C. erythrophthalmus), and each of them has occasionally visited Europe. They both build nests—remarkably small structures when compared with those of other birds of their size—and faithfully incubate their delicate sea-green eggs. In the south-western states of the Union and thence into Central America is found another curious form of cuckoo (Geococcyx)—the chaparral-cock of northern and paisano of southern settlers. The first of these names it takes from the low brushwood (chaparral) in which it chiefly dwells, and the second is said to be due to its pheasant-like (faisan corrupted into paisano, properly a countryman) appearance as it runs on the ground. Indeed, one of the two species of the genus was formerly described as a Phasianus. They both have short wings, and seem never to fly, but run with great rapidity. Returning to arboreal forms, the genera Neomorphus, Diplopterus, Saurothera and Piaya (the last two commonly called rain-birds, from the belief that their cry portends rain) may be noticed—all of them belonging to the Neotropical region; but perhaps the most curious form of American cuckoos is the ani (Crotophaga), of which three species inhabit the same region. The best-known species (C. ani) is found throughout the Antilles and on the opposite continent. In most of the British colonies it is known as the black witch, and is accused of various malpractices—it being, in truth, a perfectly harmless if not a beneficial bird. As regards its propagation this aberrant form of cuckoo departs in one direction from the normal habit of birds, for several females, unite to lay their eggs in one nest. It is evident that incubation is carried on socially, since an intruder on approaching the rude nest will disturb perhaps half a dozen of its sable proprietors, who, loudly complaining, seek safety either in the leafy branches of the tree that holds it, or in the nearest available covert, with all the speed that their feeble powers of flight permit.

(A. N.)

[1] An instance to the contrary has been recorded by Mr A. C. Smith (Zoologist, 1873, p. 3516) on Mr Brine’s authority.

[2] This series was seen in 1861 by the writer.

[3] Evidence tends to show that the same is to be said of the curious channel-bill (Scythrops novae-hollandiae), though absolute proof seems to be wanting.

CUCKOO-SPIT, a frothy secretion found upon plants, and produced by the immature nymphal stage of various plant-lice of the familiar Cercopidae and Jassidae, belonging to the homopterous division of the Hemiptera, which in the adult condition are sometimes called frog-hoppers.

CUCUMBER (Cucumis sativus, Fr. concombre, O. Fr. coucombre, whence the older English spelling and pronunciation “cowcumber,” the standard in England up to the beginning of the 18th century), a creeping plant of the natural order Cucurbitaceae. It is widely cultivated, and originated probably in northern India, where Alphonse de Candolle affirms (Origin of Cultivated Plants) that it has been cultivated for at least three thousand years. It spread westward to Europe and was cultivated by the ancient Greeks under the name σίκυος; it did not reach China until two hundred years before the Christian era. It is an annual with a rough succulent trailing stem and stalked hairy leaves with three to five pointed lobes; the stem bears branched tendrils by means of which the plant can be trained to supports. The short-stalked, bell-shaped flowers are unisexual, but staminate and pistillate are borne on the same plant; the latter are recognized by the swollen warty green ovary below the rest of the flower. The ovary develops into the “cucumber” without fertilization, and unless seeds are wanted, it is advisable to pinch off the male flowers.

There are a great many varieties of cucumber in cultivation, which may be grouped under the two headings (1) forcing, (2) field varieties.

1. The former are large-leaved strong-growing plants, not suited to outdoor culture, with long smooth-rinded fruit; there are many excellent varieties such as Telegraph, Sion House, duke of Edinburgh, &c. The plants are grown in a hot-bed which is prepared towards the end of February from rich stable manure, leaves, &c. A rich turfy loam with a little well-decomposed stable manure forms a good soil. The seeds are sown singly in rich, sandy soil in small pots early in February and plunged in a bottom heat. After they have made one or two foliage-leaves the seedlings are transferred to larger pots, and ultimately about the middle of March to the hot-bed. Each plant is placed in the centre of a mound of soil about a foot deep and well watered with tepid water. The plants should be well watered during their growing period, and the foliage sprinkled or syringed two or three times a day. In bright sunshine the plants are lightly shaded. When grown in frames the tops of the main stems are pinched off when the stems are about 2 ft. long; this causes the development of side shoots on which fruits are borne. When these have produced one or two fruits, they are also stopped at the joint beyond the fruit. When grown in greenhouses the vines may be allowed to reach the full length of the house before they are stopped. To keep the fruits straight they may be grown in cylindrical glass tubes about a foot long, or along narrow wooden troughs. If seeds are required one or more female flowers should be selected and pollen from male flower placed on their stigmas.

2. The outdoor varieties are known as hill or ridge cucumbers. They may be grown in any good soil. A warm, sheltered spot with a south aspect and a mound of rich, sandy loam with a little leaf-mould placed over a hot-bed of dung and leaves is recommended. The mounds or ridges should be 4 to 5 ft. apart, and one plant is placed in the centre of each. The seeds are sown in March in light, rich soil in small pots with gentle heat. The seedlings are repotted and well hardened for planting out in June. The plants must be well watered in and, until established, shaded by a hand-light from bright sunshine. When the leading shoots are from 1½ to 2 ft. long the tips are pinched off to induce the formation of fruit-bearing side-shoots. If seed is required a pistillate flower is selected and pollinated. There are numerous varieties distinguished by size and the smooth or prickly rind. King of the Ridge has smooth fruits a foot or more long; gherkin, a short, prickly form, is much used for pickling.

Cucumber is subject to the attacks of green fly, red spider and thrips; for the two latter, infected leaves should be sponged with soapy water; for green fly careful fumigating is necessary.

The Sikkim cucumber, C. sativus var. sikkimensis, is a large fruited form, reaching 15 in. long by 6 in. thick, grown in the Himalayas of Sikkim and Nepal. It was discovered by Sir Joseph Hooker in the eastern Himalayas in 1848. He says “so abundant were the fruits, that for days together I saw gnawed fruits lying by the natives’ paths by thousands, and every man, woman and child seemed engaged throughout the day in devouring them.” The fruit is reddish-brown, marked with yellow, and is eaten both raw and cooked.

The West India gherkin is Cucumis Anguria, a plant with small, slender vines, and very abundant small ellipsoid green fruit covered with warts and spines. It is used for pickling.

Cucumbers were much esteemed by the ancients. According to Pliny, the emperor Tiberius was supplied with them daily, both in summer and winter. The kishuim or cucumbers of the scriptures (Num. xi. 5; Isa. i. 8) were probably a wild form of C. Melo, the melon, a plant common in Egypt, where a drink is prepared from the ripe fruit. Peter Forskäl, one of the early botanical writers on the country, describes its preparation. The pulp is broken and stirred by means of a stick thrust through a hole cut at the umbilicus of the fruit; the hole is then closed with wax, and the fruit, without removing it from its stem, is buried in a little pit; after some days the pulp is found to be converted into an agreeable liquor (see Flora aegyptiaco-arabica, p. 168, 1775). The squirting cucumber, Ecballium Elaterium, the Σίκυος ἄγριος of Theophrastus, furnishes the drug elaterium (q.v.).

See Naudin in Annal. des sci. nat. ser. 4 (Botany), t. xi. (1859); G. Nicholson, Dictionary of Gardening (1885); L. H. Bailey, Cyclopaedia of American Horticulture (1900).

CUCURBITACEAE, a botanical order of dicotyledons, containing 87 genera and about 650 species, found in the temperate and warmer parts of the earth but especially developed in the tropics. The plants are generally annual herbs, climbing by means of tendrils and having a rapid growth. The long-stalked leaves are arranged alternately, and are generally palmately lobed and veined. The flowers or inflorescences are borne in the leaf-axils, in which a vegetative bud is also found, and at the side of the leaf-stalk is a simple or branched tendril. There has been much difference of opinion as to what member or members the tendril represents; the one which seems most in accordance with facts regards the tendril as a shoot, the lower portion representing the stem, the upper twining portion a leaf. The flowers are unisexual, and strikingly epigynous, the perianth and stamens being attached to a bell-shaped prolongation of the receptacle above the ovary. The five narrow pointed sepals are followed by five petals which are generally united to form a more or less bell-shaped corolla. There are five stamens in the male flowers; the anthers open towards the outside, are one-celled, with the pollen-sacs generally curved and variously united. The carpels, normally three in number, form an ovary with three thick, fleshy, bifid placentas bearing a large number of ovules on each side, and generally filling the interior of the ovary with a juicy mass. The short thick style has generally three branches each bearing a fleshy, usually forked stigma. The fruit is a fleshy many-seeded berry with a tough rind (known as a pepo), and often attains considerable size. The embryo completely fills the seed.

Fig. 2.
1, Male flower of cucumber (Cucumis). 2, Same, in vertical section, slightly enlarged. 3, Stamens, after removal of calyx and corolla.	4, Female flower. 5, Horizontal plan of male flower. 6, Transverse section of fruit.   1 and 4 nat. size.

The order is represented in Britain by bryony (Bryonia dioica), (fig. 1) a hedge-climber, perennial by means of large fleshy tubers which send up each year a number of slender angular stems. The leaves are heart-shaped with wavy margined lobes. The flowers are greenish, ½ to ¾ in. in diameter; the fruit, a red several-seeded berry, is about ¼ in. in diameter.

Many genera are of economic importance; Cucumis (fig. 2) affords cucumber (q.v.) and melon (q.v.) Cucurbita, pumpkin and marrow; Citrullus vulgaris is water-melon, and C. Colocynthis, colocynth; Ecballium Elaterium (squirting cucumber) is medicinal; Sechium edule (chocho), a tropical American species, is largely cultivated for its edible fruit; it contains one large seed which germinates in situ. Lagenaria is the gourd (q.v.). The fruits of Luffa aegyptiaca have a number of closely netted vascular bundles in the pericarp, forming a kind of loose felt which supplies the well-known loofah or bath-sponge.

CUDDALORE, a town of British India, in the South Arcot district of Madras, on the coast 125 m. S. of Madras by rail. Pop. (1901) 52,216, showing an increase of 10% in the decade. It lies low, but is regarded as exceptionally healthy, and serves as a kind of sanatorium for the surrounding district. The principal exports are sugar, oil-seeds and indigo. There are two colleges and two high schools. In the neighbourhood are the ruins of Fort St David situated on the river Gadilam, which has as stirring a history as any spot in the Presidency. As a small fort built by a Hindu merchant it fell into the hands of the Mahrattas after the capture of Gingi by Sivaji in 1677. From them it was purchased by the English in 1690, the purchase including not only the fort but the adjacent towns and villages “within ye randome shott of a piece of ordnance.” A great gun was fired to different points of the compass and all the country within its range, including the town of Cuddalore, passed into the possession of the English. The villages thus obtained are still spoken of as “cannon ball villages.” From 1725 onwards the fortifications were greatly strengthened. In 1746 Fort St David became the British headquarters for the south of India, and Dupleix’ attack was successfully repulsed. Clive was appointed its governor in 1756; in 1758 the French captured it, but abandoned it two years later to Sir Eyre Coote. In 1782 they again took it and restored it sufficiently to withstand a British attack in 1783. In 1785 it finally passed into British possession.

CUDDAPAH, a town and district of British India, in the Madras Presidency. The town is 6 m. from the right bank of the river Pennar, and 161 m. by rail from Madras. Pop. (1901) 16,432. It is now a poor place, but has some trade in cotton and indigo, and manufactures of cotton cloth. Hills surround it on three sides, and it has a bad reputation for unhealthiness.

The District of Cuddapah has an area of 8723 sq. m. It is in shape an irregular parallelogram, divided into two nearly equal parts by the range of the Eastern Ghats, which intersects it throughout its entire length. The two tracts thus formed possess totally different features. The first, which constitutes the north, east and south-east of the district, is a low-lying plain; while the other, which comprises the southern and south-western portion, forms a high table-land from 1500 to 2500 ft. above sea-level. The chief river is the Pennar, which enters the district from Bellary on the west, and flows eastwards into Nellore. Though a large and broad river, and in the rains containing a great volume of water, in the hot weather months it dwindles down to an inconsiderable stream. Its principal tributaries are the Kundaur, Saglair, Cheyair, and Papagni rivers. One of the most interesting antiquities in the district is the ancient fort of Gurramkonda. The fort is supposed to have been built by the Golconda sultans; it stands on a hill 500 ft. high, three sides of which consist of almost perpendicular precipices. According to a local legend the name Gurramkonda, meaning “horse hill,” was derived from the fact that a horse was supposed to be guardian of the fort and that the place was impregnable so long as the horse remained there. The story goes that a Mahratta chief at length succeeded in scaling the precipice and in carrying off the horse, and although the thief was captured before reaching the base of the hill, the spell was broken and the fort, when next attacked, fell. The population of the district in 1901 was 1,291,267. The principal crops are millet, rice, other food grains, pulse, oil-seeds, cotton and indigo. The two last are largely exported. There are several steam factories for pressing cotton, and indigo vats. The district is served by lines of the Madras and the South Indian railways.

CUDWORTH, RALPH (1617-1688), English philosopher, was born at Aller, Somersetshire, the son of Dr Ralph Cudworth (d. 1624), rector of Aller, formerly fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His father died in 1624, and his mother then married the Rev. Dr Stoughton, who gave the boy a good home education. Cudworth was sent to his father’s college, was elected fellow in 1639, and became a successful tutor. In 1642 he published A Discourse concerning the true Notion of the Lord’s Supper, and a tract entitled The Union of Christ and the Church. In 1645 he was appointed master of Clare Hall and the same year was elected Regius professor of Hebrew. He was now recognized as a leader among the remarkable group known as the Cambridge Platonists (q.v.). The whole party were more or less in sympathy with the Commonwealth, and Cudworth was consulted by John Thurloe, Cromwell’s secretary of state, in regard to university and government appointments. His sermons, such as that preached before the House of Commons, on the 31st of March 1647, advocate principles of religious toleration and charity. In 1650 he was presented to the college living of North Cadbury, Somerset. From the diary of his friend John Worthington we learn that Cudworth was nearly compelled, through poverty, to leave the university, but in 1654 he was elected master of Christ’s College, whereupon he married. On the Restoration he contributed some Hebrew verses to the Academiae Cantabrigiensis Σῶστρα, a congratulatory volume addressed to the king. In 1662 he was presented to the rectory of Ashwell, Herts. In 1665 he almost quarrelled with his fellow-Platonist, Henry More, because the latter had written an ethical work which Cudworth feared would interfere with his own long-contemplated treatise on the same subject. To avoid clashing, More brought out his book, the Enchiridion ethicum, in Latin; Cudworth’s never appeared. In 1678 he published The True Intellectual System of the Universe: the first part, wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted and its impossibility demonstrated (imprimatur dated 1671). No more was published, perhaps because of the theological clamour raised against this first part. Cudworth was installed prebendary of Gloucester in 1678. He died on the 26th of June 1688, and was buried in the chapel of Christ’s. His only surviving child, Damaris, a devout and talented woman, became the second wife of Sir Francis Masham, and was distinguished as the friend of John Locke. Much of Cudworth’s work still remains in manuscript; A Treatise concerning eternal and immutable Morality was published in 1731; and A Treatise of Freewill, edited by John Allen, in 1838; both are connected with the design of his magnum opus, the Intellectual System.

The Intellectual System arose, so its author tells us, out of a discourse refuting “fatal necessity,” or determinism. Enlarging his plan, he proposed to prove three matters: (a) the existence of God; (b) the naturalness of moral distinctions; and (c) the reality of human freedom. These three together make up the intellectual (as opposed to the physical) system of the universe; and they are opposed respectively by three false principles, atheism, religious fatalism which refers all moral distinctions to the will of God, and thirdly the fatalism of the ancient Stoics, who recognized God and yet identified Him with nature. The immense fragment dealing with atheism is all that was published by its author. Cudworth criticizes two main forms of materialistic atheism, the atomic, adopted by Democritus, Epicurus and Hobbes; and the hylozoic, attributed to Strato, which explains everything by the supposition of an inward self-organizing life in matter. Atomic atheism is by far the more important, if only because Hobbes, the great antagonist whom Cudworth always has in view, is supposed to have held it. It arises out of the combination of two principles, neither of which is atheistic taken separately, i.e. atomism and corporealism, or the doctrine that nothing exists but body. The example of Stoicism, as Cudworth points out, shows that corporealism may be theistic. Into the history of atomism Cudworth plunges with vast erudition. It is, in its purely physical application, a theory that he fully accepts; he holds that it was taught by Pythagoras, Empedocles, and in fact, nearly all the ancient philosophers, and was only perverted to atheism by Democritus. It was first invented, he believes, before the Trojan war, by a Sidonian thinker named Moschus or Mochus, who is identical with the Moses of the Old Testament. In dealing with atheism Cudworth’s method is to marshal the atheistic arguments elaborately, so elaborately that Dryden remarked “he has raised such objections against the being of a God and Providence that many think he has not answered them”; then in his last chapter, which by itself is as long as an ordinary treatise, he confutes them with all the reasons that his reading could supply. A subordinate matter in the book that attracted much attention at the time is the conception of the “Plastic Medium,” which is a mere revival of Plato’s “World-Soul,” and is meant to explain the existence and laws of nature without referring all to the direct operation of God. It occasioned a long-drawn controversy between Pierre Bayle and Le Clerc, the former maintaining, the latter denying, that the Plastic Medium is really favourable to atheism.

No modern reader can endure to toil through the Intellectual System; its only interest is the light it throws upon the state of religious thought after the Restoration, when, as Birch puts it, “irreligion began to lift up its head.” It is immensely diffuse and pretentious, loaded with digressions, its argument buried under masses of fantastic, uncritical learning, the work of a vigorous but quite unoriginal mind. As Bolingbroke said, Cudworth “read too much to think enough, and admired too much to think freely.” It is no calamity that natural procrastination, or the clamour caused by his candid treatment of atheism and by certain heretical tendencies detected by orthodox criticism in his view of the Trinity, made Cudworth leave the work unfinished.

A much more favourable judgment must be given upon the short Treatise on eternal and immutable Morality, which deserves to be read by those who are interested in the historical development of British moral philosophy. It is an answer to Hobbes’s famous doctrine that moral distinctions are created by the state, an answer from the standpoint of Platonism. Just as knowledge contains a permanent intelligible element over and above the flux of sense-impressions, so there exist eternal and immutable ideas of morality. Cudworth’s ideas, like Plato’s, have “a constant and never-failing entity of their own,” such as we see in geometrical figures; but, unlike Plato’s, they exist in the mind of God, whence they are communicated to finite understandings. Hence “it is evident that wisdom, knowledge and understanding are eternal and self-subsistent things, superior to matter and all sensible beings, and independent upon them”; and so also are moral good and evil. At this point Cudworth stops; he does not attempt to give any list of Moral Ideas. It is, indeed, the cardinal weakness of this form of intuitionism that no satisfactory list can be given and that no moral principles have the “constant and never-failing entity,” or the definiteness, of the concepts of geometry. Henry More, in his Enchiridion ethicum, attempts to enumerate the “noemata moralia”; but, so far from being self-evident, most of his moral axioms are open to serious controversy.

The Intellectual System was translated into Latin by J. L. Mosheim and furnished with notes and dissertations which were translated into English in J. Harrison’s edition (1845). Our chief biographical authority is T. Birch’s “Account,” which appears in editions of the Works. There is a good chapter on Cudworth in J. Tulloch’s Rational Theology, vol. ii. Consult also P. Janet’s Essai sur le médiateur plastique (1860), W. R. Scott’s Introduction to Cudworth’s “Treatise,” and J. Martineau’s Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii.

(H. St.)

CUENCA, a city and the capital of the province of Azuay, Ecuador, about 190 m. S. of Quito and 70 m. S.E. of Guayaquil. Pop. (1908 estimate) 30,000 (largely Indians), including the suburb of Ejido. Cuenca stands at the northern end of a broad valley, or basin, of the Andes, lying between the transverse ridges of Azuay and Loja, and is about 8640 ft. above sea-level. Near by is the hill of Tarqui which the French astronomers chose for their meridian in 1742. Communication with the coast is difficult. Cuenca is the third most important city of Ecuador, being the seat of a bishopric, and having a college, a university faculty, a cathedral, and several churches, and a considerable industrial and commercial development. It manufactures sugar, woollen goods and pottery, and exports Peruvian bark (cinchona), hats, cereals, cheese, hides, &c. It was founded in 1557 on the site of a native town called Tumibamba, and was made an episcopal see in 1786.

CUENCA, a province of central Spain bounded on the N. by Guadalajara, N.E. by Teruel, E. by Valencia, S. by Albacete, S.W. by Ciudad Real, W. by Toledo and N.W. by Madrid. Pop. (1900) 249,696; area, 6636 sq. m. Cuenca occupies the eastern part of the ancient kingdom of New Castile, and slopes from the Serrania de Cuenca (highest point the Cerro de San Felipe, on the north-eastern border of the province, 5905 ft.), down into the great southern Castilian plain watered by the upper streams of the Guadiana. The lowlands bordering on Ciudad Real belong to the wide plain of La Mancha (q.v.). The rocky and bare highland of Cuenca on the north and east includes the upper valley of the Jucar and its tributary streams, but in the north-west the province is watered by tributaries of the Tagus. The forests are proverbial for their pine timber, and rival those of Soria; considerable quantities of timber are floated down the Tagus to Aranjuez and thence taken to Madrid for building purposes. Excessive droughts prevail; the climate of the hills and of the high plateaus is harsh and cold, but the valleys are excessively hot in summer. The soil, where well watered, is fertile, but little attention is paid to agriculture, and three-fourths of the area is left under pasture. The rearing of cattle, asses, mules and sheep is the principal employment of the people; olive oil, nuts, wine, wheat, silk, wax and honey are the chief products. Iron, copper, alum, saltpetre, jasper and agates are found, but in 1903 all the workings had been abandoned except three salt mines; and there are few manufactures except the weaving of coarse cloth. The roads are in such a backward condition that they cripple not only the mining interests but also the exports of timber, and at the beginning of the 20th century there was no railway except a branch line which passed westwards from Aranjuez through Tarancon to Cuenca, the capital (pop. 1900, 10,756). No other town has as many as 6000 inhabitants, and no other Spanish province is so thinly populated as Cuenca. In 1900 there were only 37.6 inhabitants per sq. m. Education is backward, and extreme poverty almost universal among the peasantry. See also [Castile].

CUENCA, the capital of the Spanish province of Cuenca; 125 m. by rail E. by S. of Madrid. Pop. (1900) 10,756. Cuenca occupies a height of the well-wooded Serrania de Cuenca, at an elevation of 2960 ft., overlooking the confluence of the rivers Jucar and Huecar. A fine bridge, built in 1523, crosses the Jucar to the convent of San Pablo. Among several interesting churches in the city, the most noteworthy is the 13th-century Gothic cathedral, celebrated for the beautiful carved woodwork of its 16th-century doorway, and containing some admirable examples of Spanish sculpture. The city has a considerable trade in timber, and was long the headquarters of the provincial wool industry; the loss of which, in modern times, has partly been compensated by the development of soap, paper, chocolate, match and leather manufactures. Cuenca was captured from the Moors by Alphonso VIII. of Castile in 1177, and shortly afterwards became an episcopal see. In 1874 it offered a prolonged and gallant resistance to the Carlist rebels.

CUESTA, a name of Spanish origin used in New Mexico for low ridges of steep descent on one side and gentle slope on the other. It has been proposed as a term for the land form which consists of the two elements of a steep scarp or “strike” face, and an inclined plain or gentle “dip” slope.

CUEVAS DE VERA, a town of south-eastern Spain, in the province of Almería; on the right bank of the river Almanzora, 8 m. W. of the Mediterranean Sea. Pop. (1900) 20,562. Cuevas de Vera is built at the eastern extremity of the Sierra de los Filabres (6823 ft.), which isolate it from the railway system of Almería. It is, however, the chief market for the rich agricultural districts towards the south and for the argentiferous lead and other mines among the mountains. In appearance it is modern, with wide streets, two fine squares, and a parish church in Doric style, dating from 1758. But in reality the town is of considerable antiquity. One of the towers in the Moorish palace owned by the marquesses of Villafranca is probably of Roman origin.

CUFF. (1) (Of uncertain origin), the lower edge of a sleeve turned back to show an ornamental border, or with an addition of lace or trimming; now used chiefly of the stiff bands of linen worn under the coat-sleeve either loose or attached to the shirt. (2) Also uncertain in origin, but with no connexion, probably, with (1), a blow with the hand either open or closed, as opposed to the use of weapons.

CUIRASS (Fr. cuirasse, Lat. coriaceus, made of leather, from corium, the original breastplate being of leather), the plate armour, whether formed of a single piece of metal or other rigid material or composed of two or more pieces, which covers the front of the wearer’s person. In a suit of armour, however, since this important piece was generally worn in connexion with a corresponding defence for the back, the term cuirass commonly is understood to imply the complete body-armour, including both the breast and the back plates. Thus this complete body-armour appears in the middle ages frequently to have been described as a “pair of plates.” The corslet (Fr. corselet, diminutive of the O. Fr. cors, body), a comparatively light cuirass, is more strictly a breast-plate only. As parts of the military equipment of classic antiquity, cuirasses and corslets of bronze, and at later periods also of iron or some other rigid substance, were habitually in use; but while some special kind of secondary protection for the breast had been worn in earlier times by the men-at-arms in addition to their mail hauberks and their “cotes” armed with splints and studs, it was not till the 14th century that a regular body-defence of plate can be said to have become an established component of medieval armour. As this century continued to advance, the cuirass is found gradually to have come into general use, in connexion with plate defences for the limbs, until, at the close of the century, the long familiar interlinked chain-mail is no longer visible in knightly figures, except in the camail of the bassinet and at the edge of the hauberk. The prevailing, and indeed almost the universal, usage throughout this century was that the cuirass was worn covered. Thus, the globose form of the breast-armour of the Black Prince, in his effigy in Canterbury cathedral, 1376, intimates that a cuirass as well as a hauberk is to be considered to have been covered by the royalty-emblazoned jupon of the prince. The cuirass, thus worn in the 14th century, was always made of sufficient length to rest on the hips; otherwise, if not thus supported, it must have been suspended from the shoulders, in which case it would have effectually interfered with the free and vigorous action of the wearer. Early in the 15th century, the entire panoply of plate, including the cuirass, began to be worn without any surcoat; but in the concluding quarter of the century the short surcoat, with full short sleeves, known as the tabard, was in general use over the armour. At the same time that the disuse of the surcoat became general, small plates of various forms and sizes (and not always made in pairs, the plate for the right or sword-arm often being smaller and lighter than its companion), were attached to the armour in front of the shoulders, to defend the otherwise vulnerable points where the plate defences of the upper-arms and the cuirass left a gap on each side. About the middle of the century, instead of being formed of a single plate, the breast-plate of the cuirass was made in two parts, the lower adjusted to overlap the upper, and contrived by means of a strap or sliding rivet to give flexibility to this defence. In the second half of the 15th century the cuirass occasionally was superseded by the “brigandine jacket,” a defence formed of some textile fabric, generally of rich material, lined throughout with overlapping scales (resembling the earlier “imbricated” form) of metal, which were attached to the jacket by rivets, having their heads, like studs, visible on the outside. In the 16th century, when occasionally, and by personages of exalted rank, splendid surcoats were worn over the armour, the cuirass—its breast-piece during the first half of the century, globular in form—was constantly reinforced by strong additional plates attached to it by rivets or screws. About 1550 the breast-piece of the cuirass was characterized by a vertical central ridge, called the “tapul” having near its centre a projecting point; this projection, somewhat later, was brought lower down, and eventually the profile of the plate, the projection having been carried to its base, assumed the singular form which led to this fashion of the cuirass being distinguished as the “peascod cuirass.”

Corslets provided with both breast and back pieces were worn by foot-soldiers in the 17th century, while their mounted comrades were equipped in heavier and stronger cuirasses; and these defences continued in use after the other pieces of armour, one by one, had gradually been laid aside. Their use, however, never altogether ceased, and in modern armies mounted cuirassiers, armed as in earlier days with breast and back plates, have in some degree emulated the martial splendour of the body-armour of the era of medieval chivalry. Some years after Waterloo certain historical cuirasses were taken from their repose in the Tower of London, and adapted for service by the Life Guards and the Horse Guards. For parade purposes, the Prussian Gardes du Corps and other corps wear cuirasses of richly decorated leather.

CUIRASSIERS, a kind of heavy cavalry, originally developed out of the men-at-arms or gendarmerie forming the heavy cavalry of feudal armies. Their special characteristic was the wearing of full armour, which they retained long after other troops had abandoned it. Hence they became distinguished as cuirassiers. The first Austrian corps of kyrissers was formed in 1484 by the emperor Maximilian and was 100 strong. In 1705 Austria possessed twenty regiments of cuirassiers. After the war of 1866, however, the existing regiments were converted into dragoons. Russia has likewise in modern times abolished all but a few guard regiments of cuirassiers. The Prussian cuirassiers were first so called under Frederick William I., and in the wars of his successor Frederick the Great they bore a conspicuous part. After the Seven Years’ War they ceased to wear the cuirass on service, but after 1814 these were reintroduced, the spoils taken from the French cuirassiers being used to equip the troops. The cuirass is now worn only on ceremonial parades. In France the cuirassiers date from 1666, when a regiment, subsequently numbered 8th of the line, was formed. During the first Empire many regiments were created, until in 1812 there were fourteen. The number was reduced after the fall of Napoleon, but in modern times it has been again increased. The French regiments alone in Europe wear the cuirass on all parades and at manœuvres.

CUJAS (or Cujacius), JACQUES (or as he called himself, Jacques de Cujas) (1520-1590), French jurisconsult, was born at Toulouse, where his father, whose name was Cujaus, was a fuller. Having taught himself Latin and Greek, he studied law under Arnoul Ferrier, then professor at Toulouse, and rapidly gained a great reputation as a lecturer on Justinian. In 1554 he was appointed professor of law at Cahors, and about a year after L’Hôpital called him to Bourges. Duaren, however, who also held a professorship at Bourges, stirred up the students against the new professor, and such was the disorder produced in consequence that Cujas was glad to yield to the storm, and accept an invitation he had received to the university of Valence. Recalled to Bourges at the death of Duaren in 1559, he remained there till 1567, when he returned to Valence. There he gained a European reputation, and collected students from all parts of the continent, among whom were Joseph Scaliger and de Thou. In 1573 Charles IX. appointed Cujas counsellor to the parlement of Grenoble, and in the following year a pension was bestowed on him by Henry III. Margaret of Savoy induced him to remove to Turin; but after a few months (1575) he once more took his old place at Bourges. But the religious wars drove him thence. He was called by the king to Paris, and permission was granted him by the parlement to lecture on civil law in the university of the capital. A year after, however, he finally took up his residence at Bourges, where he remained till his death in 1590, in spite of a handsome offer made him by Gregory XIII. in 1584 to attract him to Bologna.

The life of Cujas was altogether that of a scholar and teacher. In the religious wars which filled all the thoughts of his contemporaries he steadily refused to take any part. Nihil hoc ad edictum praetoris, “this has nothing to do with the edict of the praetor,” was his usual answer to those who spoke to him on the subject. His surpassing merit as a jurisconsult consisted in the fact that he turned from the ignorant commentators on Roman law to the Roman law itself. He consulted a very large number of manuscripts, of which he had collected more than 500 in his own library; but, unfortunately, he left orders in his will that his library should be divided among a number of purchasers, and his collection was thus scattered, and in great part lost. His emendations, of which a large number were published under the title of Animadversiones et observationes, were not confined to lawbooks, but extended to many of the Latin and Greek classical authors. In jurisprudence his study was far from being devoted solely to Justinian; he recovered and gave to the world a part of the Theodosian Code, with explanations; and he procured the manuscript of the Basilica, a Greek abridgment of Justinian, afterwards published by Fabrot (see [Basilica]). He also composed a commentary on the Consueludines Feudorum, and on some books of the Decretals. In the Paratitla, or summaries which he made of the Digest, and particularly of the Code of Justinian, he condensed into short axioms the elementary principles of law, and gave definitions remarkable for their admirable clearness and precision. His lessons, which he never dictated, were continuous discourses, for which he made no other preparation than that of profound meditation on the subjects to be discussed. He was impatient of interruption, and upon the least noise he would instantly quit the chair and retire. He was strongly attached to his pupils, and Scaliger affirms that he lost more than 4000 livres by lending money to such of them as were in want.

In his lifetime Cujas published an edition of his works (Neville, 1577). It is beautiful and exact, but incomplete; it is now very scarce. The edition of Colombet (1634) is also incomplete. Fabrot, however, collected the whole in the edition which he published at Paris (1658), in 10 vols. folio, and which was reprinted at Naples (1722, 1727), in 11 vols. folio, and at Naples and at Venice (1758), in 10 vols. folio, with an index forming an eleventh volume. In the editions of Naples and Venice there are some additions not to be found in that of Fabrot, particularly a general table, which will be found very useful, and interpretations of all the Greek words used by Cujas.

See Papire-Masson, Vie de Cujas (Paris, 1590); Terrasson, Histoire de la jurisprudence romaine, and Mélanges d’histoire, de littérature, et de jurisprudence; Bernardi, Éloge de Cujas (Lyons, 1775); Hugo, Civilistisches Magazin; Berriat Saint Prix, Mémoires de Cujas, appended to his Histoire du droit romain; Biographie universelle; Gravina, De ortu et progressu juris civilis; Spangenberg, Cujacius und seine Zeitgenossen (Leipzig, 1882).

CULDEES, an ancient monastic order with settlements in Ireland and Scotland. It was long fondly imagined by Protestant and especially by Presbyterian writers that they had preserved primitive Christianity free from Roman corruptions in one remote corner of western Europe, a view enshrined in Thomas Campbell’s Reullura:

Another view, promulgated like the above by Hector Boece in his Latin history of Scotland (1516), makes them the direct successors in the 9th to the 12th century of the organized Irish and Iona monasticism of the 6th to the 8th century. Both these views were disproved by William Reeves (1815-1892), bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore.

As found in the Irish MSS. the name is Céle Dé, i.e. God’s comrade or sworn ally. It was latinized as Coli dei, whence Boece’s culdei. The term seems, like the Latin vir dei, to have been applied generally to monks and hermits. There are very few trustworthy ancient sources of information, but it seems probable that the Rule of Chrodegang,[1] archbishop of Metz (d. 766), was brought by Irish monks to their native land from the monasteries of north-eastern Gaul, and that Irish anchorites originally unfettered by the rules of the cloister bound themselves by it. In the course of the 9th century we find mention of nine places in Ireland (including Armagh, Clonmacnoise, Clones, Devenish and Sligo) where communities of these Culdees were established as a kind of annexe to the regular monastic institutions. They seem especially to have had the care of the poor and the sick, and were interested in the musical part of worship. Meanwhile in Scotland the Iona monks had been expelled by the Pictish king Nechtan in 717, and the vacancies thus caused were by no means filled by the Roman monks who thronged into the north from Northumbria. Into the gap, towards the end of the 8th century, came the Culdees from Ireland. The features of their life in Scotland, which is the most important epoch in the history of the order, seem to resemble closely those of the secular canons of England and the continent. From the outset they were more or less isolated, and, having no fixed forms or common head, tended to decay. In the 12th century the Celtic Church was completely metamorphosed on the Roman pattern, and in the process the Culdees also lost any distinctiveness they may formerly have had, being brought, like the secular clergy, under canonical rule. The pictures that we have of Culdee life in the 12th century vary considerably. The chief houses in Scotland were at St Andrews, Dunkeld, Lochleven, Monymusk in Aberdeenshire, Abernethy and Brechin. Each was an independent establishment controlled entirely by its own abbot and apparently divided into two sections, one priestly and the other lay and even married. At St Andrews about the year 1100 there were thirteen Culdees holding office by hereditary tenure and paying more regard to their own prosperity and aggrandizement than to the services of the church or the needs of the populace. A much-needed measure of reform, inaugurated by Queen Margaret, was carried through by her sons Alexander I. and David I.; gradually the whole position passed into the hands of Turgot and his successors in the bishopric. Canons Regular were instituted and some of the Culdees joined the new order. Those who declined were allowed a life-rent of their revenues and lingered on as a separate but ever-dwindling body till the beginning of the 14th century, when, excluded from voting at the election of the bishop, they disappear from history. At Dunkeld, Crinan, the grandfather of Malcolm Canmore, was a lay abbot, and tradition says that even the clerical members were married, though like the priests of the Eastern Church, they lived apart from their wives during their term of sacerdotal service. The Culdees of Lochleven lived on St Serf’s Inch, which had been given them by a Pictish prince, Brude, about 850. In 1093 they surrendered their island to the bishop of St Andrews in return for perpetual food and clothing, but Robert, who was bishop in 1144, handed over all their vestments, books,[2] and other property, with the island, to the newly founded Canons Regular, in which probably the Culdees were incorporated. There is no trace of such partial independence as was experienced at St Andrews itself, possibly because the bishop’s grant was backed up by a royal charter. In the same fashion the Culdees of Monymusk, originally perhaps a colony from St Andrews, became Canons Regular of the Augustinian order early in the 13th century, and those of Abernethy in 1273. At Brechin, famous like Abernethy for its round tower, the Culdee prior and his monks helped to form the chapter of the diocese founded by David I. in 1145, though the name persisted for a generation or two. Similar absorptions no doubt account for the disappearance of the Culdees of York, a name borne by the canons of St Peter’s about 925, and of Snowdon and Bardsey Island in north Wales mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1190) in his Speculum Ecclesiae and Itinerarium respectively. The former community was, he says, sorely oppressed by the covetous Cistercians. These seem to be the only cases where the Culdees are found in England and Wales. In Ireland the Culdees of Armagh endured until the dissolution in 1541, and enjoyed a fleeting resurrection in 1627, soon after which their ancient property passed to the vicars choral of the cathedral.

See W. Reeves, The Culdees of the British Islands (Dublin, 1864); W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland (1876-1880), especially vol. ii.; W. Beveridge, Makers of the Scottish Church (1908). The older view will be found in J. Jamieson’s Historical Account of the Ancient Culdees (1811).

[1] Devised originally for the clergy of Chrodegang’s cathedral, it was largely an adaptation of St Benedict’s rule to secular clergy living in common. In 816 it was confirmed, with certain modifications, by the synod of Aix-la-Chapelle, and became the law for collegiate and cathedral churches in the Frankish empire. See [Canon].

[2] The list of these in the deed of transfer is the oldest Scottish library catalogue.

CULEBRA, the smaller of two islands lying in the Virgin Passage immediately E. of Porto Rico and known as the Islas de Passaje. It is about 18 m. distant from Cape San Juan and rises from the same submerged plateau with the larger islands of the Antilles. Its extreme dimensions are 3 by 6 m., and its surface is low and comparatively uniform, which gives the prevailing winds an unbroken sweep across it. For this reason the rainfall is limited to a short season, and the population is compelled to store rainwater in cisterns for drinking purposes. Its soil is fertile, and cattle, poultry, vegetables and small fruits are produced. The island has been a dependency of Porto Rico since 1879, when its colonization was formally undertaken, and it is now described as a ward of the Vieques district of the department of Humacao. In 1902 the American naval authorities selected the Playa Sardinas harbour on the S. side of Culebra as a rendezvous of the fleet and marine encampments were located on shore. The strategic position of the island, its healthiness and its continued use as a naval station have given it considerable importance. Its population was 704 in 1899, which had increased to nearly 1200 in 1903.

CULLEN, PAUL (1803-1878), cardinal and archbishop of Dublin, was born near Ballytore, Co. Kildare, and educated first at the Quaker school at Carlow and afterwards at Rome, where he joined the Urban College of the Propaganda and, after passing a brilliant course, was ordained in 1829. He then became vice-rector, and afterwards rector, of the Irish National College in Rome; and during the Mazzini revolution of 1848 he was rector of the Urban College, saving the property under the protection of the American flag. In 1849, on the strong recommendation of Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam, Cullen was nominated as successor to the primatial see of Armagh; and, on his return to Ireland, presided as papal delegate at the national council of Thurles in the August of 1850. Taking a strong line on the educational question which was then agitating Ireland, he took a leading part in the national movement of 1850-1852, and at first supported the Tenant Rights League. In May 1852 he was translated to Dublin, and soon a divergence of opinion broke out between him and the more ardent Nationalists under Archbishop MacHale. When the Irish university was started, with Newman, appointed by Cullen, at its head, the scheme was wrecked by the personal opposition to the archbishop of Dublin. As time went on, his distrust of the national movement grew deeper; and in 1853 he sternly forbade his clergy to take part publicly in politics, and for this he was denounced by the Tablet newspaper. His own political opinion had best be told in his own words. “For thirty years I have studied the revolution on the continent, and for nearly thirty years I have watched the Nationalist movement in Ireland. It is tainted at its sources with the revolutionary spirit. If any attempt is made to abridge the rights and liberties of the Catholic Church in Ireland, it will not be by the English government nor by a ‘No Popery’ cry in England, but by the revolutionary and irreligious Nationalists of Ireland” (Purcell’s Life of Manning, ii. 610). Cullen, therefore, while an ardent patriot, was consistently an opponent of Fenianism. He was made cardinal in 1866, being the first Irish cardinal. Energetic as an administrator, churches and schools rose throughout his diocese; and the excellent Mater Misericordiae Hospital and the seminary at Clonlife are lasting memorials of his zeal. He took part in the Vatican Council as an ardent infallibilist. In 1873 he was defendant in a libel action brought against him by the Rev. R. O’Keeffe, parish priest of Callan, on account of two sentences of ecclesiastical censure pronounced by the cardinal as papal delegate. The damages were laid at £10,000. Three of the four judges allowed the defence of the cardinal to be valid; but it was held that the papal rescript upon which he relied for his extraordinary powers as delegate was illegal under statute; and the lord chief justice decided that the plaintiff could not renounce his natural and civil liberty. After several days’ trial, during which Cullen was submitted to a very close examination, the verdict was given for the plaintiff with ¼d. damages. The cardinal died in Dublin on the 24th of October 1878.

(E. Tn.)

CULLEN, WILLIAM (1710-1790), Scottish physician and medical teacher, was born at Hamilton, Lanarkshire, on the 15th of April 1710. He received his early education at the grammar-school of Hamilton, and he appears to have subsequently attended some classes at the university of Glasgow. He began his medical career as apprentice to John Paisley, a Glasgow surgeon, and after completing his apprenticeship he became surgeon to a merchant vessel trading between London and the West Indies. On his return to Scotland in 1732 he settled as a practitioner in the parish of Shotts, Lanarkshire, and in 1734-1736 studied medicine at Edinburgh, where he was one of the founders of the Royal Medical Society. In 1736 he began to practise in Hamilton, where he rapidly acquired a high reputation. From 1737 to 1740 William Hunter was his resident pupil, and at one time they proposed to enter into partnership. In 1740 Cullen took the degree of M.D. at Glasgow, whither he removed in 1744. During his residence at Hamilton, besides the arduous duties of medical practice, he found time to devote to the study of the natural sciences, and especially of chemistry. On coming to Glasgow he appears to have begun to lecture in connexion with the university, the medical school of which was as yet imperfectly organized. Besides the subjects of theory and practice of medicine, he lectured systematically on botany, materia medica and chemistry. His great abilities, enthusiasm and power of conveying instruction made him a successful and highly popular teacher, and his classes increased largely in numbers. At the same time he diligently pursued the practice of his profession. Chemistry was the subject which at this time seems to have engaged the greatest share of his attention. He was himself a diligent investigator and experimenter, and he did much to encourage original research among his pupils, one of whom was Dr Joseph Black. In 1751 he was appointed professor of medicine, but continued to lecture on chemistry, and in 1756 he was elected joint professor of chemistry at Edinburgh along with Andrew Plummer, on whose death in the following year the sole appointment was conferred on Cullen. This chair he held for ten years—his classes always increasing in numbers. He also practised his profession as a physician with eminent success. From 1757 he delivered lectures on clinical medicine in the Royal Infirmary. This was a work for which his experience, habits of observation, and scientific training peculiarly fitted him, and in which his popularity as a teacher, no less than his power as a practical physician, became more than ever conspicuous. On the death of Charles Alston in 1760, Cullen at the request of the students undertook to finish his course of lectures on materia medica; he delivered an entirely new course, which were published in an unauthorized edition in 1771, but which he re-wrote and issued as A Treatise on Materia Medica in 1789.

On the death of Robert Whytt (1714-1766), the professor of the institutes of medicine, Cullen accepted the chair, at the same time resigning that of chemistry. In the same year he had been an unsuccessful candidate for the professorship of the practice of physic, but subsequently an arrangement was made between him and John Gregory, who had gained the appointment, by which they agreed to deliver alternate courses on the theory and practice of physic. This arrangement proved eminently satisfactory, but it was brought to a close by the sudden death of Gregory in 1773. Cullen was then appointed sole professor of the practice of physic, and he continued in this office till a few months before his death, which took place on the 5th of February 1790.

As a lecturer Cullen appears to have stood unrivalled in his day. His clearness of statement and power of imparting interest to the most abstruse topics were the conspicuous features of his teaching, and in his various capacities as a scientific lecturer, a physiologist, and a practical physician, he was ever surrounded with large and increasing classes of intelligent pupils, to whom his eminently suggestive mode of instruction was specially attractive. Living at the time he did, when the doctrines of the humoral pathologists were carried to an extreme extent, and witnessing the ravages which disease made on the solid structures of the body, it was not surprising that he should oppose a doctrine which appeared to him to lead to a false practice and to fatal results, and adopt one which attributed more to the agency of the solids and very little to that of the fluids of the body. His chief works were First Lines of the Practice of Physic (1774); Institutions of Medicine (1770); and Synopsis Nosologicae Medicae (1785), which contained his classification of diseases into four great classes—(1) Pyrexiae, or febrile diseases, as typhus fever; (2) Neuroses, or nervous diseases, as epilepsy; (3) Cachexiae, or diseases resulting from bad habit of body, as scurvy; and (4) Locales, or local diseases, as cancer.

Cullen’s eldest son Robert became a Scottish judge in 1796 under the title of Lord Cullen, and was known for his powers of mimicry.

The first volume of an account of Cullen’s Life, Lectures and Writings was published by Dr John Thomson in 1832, and was reissued with the second volume (completing the work) by Drs W. Thomson and D. Craigie in 1859.

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.

The Culm measures of the Devonshire district are folded into a broad syncline with its axis running east and west; but within this major fold the rocks have been subjected to much compression accompanied by minor folding. This circumstance, together with the apparent barrenness of the strata, has always made a correct interpretation of their position and relationships a matter of difficulty; and for long they were regarded as an abnormal expression of the Lower Carboniferous, with the uppermost beds as doubtful equivalents of the Millstone Grit of other parts of Britain. The labours of W. A. E. Ussher and of G. J. Hinde and H. Fox have resulted in the differentiation of the following subdivisions in the Devonshire Culm:—(1) Upper Culm Measures or Eggesford grits; (2) Middle Culm Measures, comprising the Morchard, Tiverton and Ugbrooke lithological types overlying the Exeter type; (3) Lower Culm, the Posidonomya limestone and shale overlying the Coddon Hill beds with radiolaria. Ussher’s subdivisions were introduced to satisfy the exigencies of geological mapping, but, as he pointed out, while they are necessary in some parts of the district and convenient in others, the lithological characters upon which they are founded are variable and inconstant. More recently E. A. N. Arber (1904-1907) clearly demonstrated that no palaeontological subdivision of the Upper Culm (Middle and Upper) is possible, and that these strata, on the evidence of the fossil plants, represent the Middle Coal Measures of other parts of the country. Wheelton Hind has called attention to the probability that the Posidonomya limestone and shale may represent the Pendleside group of Lancashire, Derbyshire, &c. The Coddon Hill beds may belong to this or to a lower horizon. Thus the English Culm measures comprise an Upper Carboniferous and a Lower Carboniferous group, while in Germany, Austria and elsewhere, as it is important to bear in mind, the Culm, or “Kulm,” stage is shown by its contained fossils to belong to the lower division alone.

The typical Carboniferous limestone of the Franco-Belgian area changes as it is traced towards the east and south into the sandy, shaly Culm phase, with the characteristic “Posidonia” (Posidonomya) schists. This aspect of the Culm is found in Saxony, where there are workable coals, in Bohemia, Thuringia, the Fichtelgebirge, the Harz, where the beds are traversed by mineral veins, and in Moravia and Silesia. In the last-mentioned region the thickness of the Culm formation has been estimated by D. Stur at over 45,000 ft. In the east and south of the Schiefergebirge (a general term for the slaty mountains of the Hundsrück and Taunus range, the Westerwald and part of the Eifel district), the Culm shales pass upwards into a coarser deposit, the “Culm-grauwacke,” which attains a considerable thickness and superficial extent. Culm fossils appear in the Carnic Alps, in the Balkans and parts of Spain, also in Spitzbergen and part of New Guinea.

The most characteristic fossil is of course Posidonomya Becheri; others are Glyphioceras sphaericum, Rhodea patentissima, Asterocalamites scrobiculatus (Schloth), Lepidodendron veltheimianum, Gastrioceras carbonarium.

See E. A. N. Arber, “On the Upper Carboniferous Rocks of West Devon and North Cornwall,” Q.J.G.S. lxiii. (1907), which contains a bibliography of the English Culm; E. Holzapfel, Paläont. Abhandl. Bd. v. Heft i. (1889); H. Potonié, Abhandl. preuss. geol. Landesanst., Neue Folge, 36 (1901); D. Stur, “Die Culm Flora,” Abhandl. k.k. geol. Reichsanst. viii. (Vienna, 1875).

(J. A. H.)

[1] This word is possibly connected with col, coal; distinguish “culm,” the stem of a plant, Lat. culmus.

CULMINATION (from Lat. culmen, summit), the attainment of the highest point. In astronomy the term is given to the passage of a heavenly body over the meridian of a place. Two culminations take place in the course of the day, one above and the other below the pole. The first is called the upper, the second the lower. Either or both may occur below the horizon and therefore be invisible.

CULPRIT, properly the prisoner at the bar, one accused of a crime; so used, generally, of one guilty of an offence. In origin the word is a combination of two Anglo-French legal words, culpable, guilty, and prit or prist, i.e. prest, Old French for prêt, ready. On the prisoner at the bar pleading “not guilty,” the clerk of the crown answered “culpable,” and stated that he was ready (prest) to join issue. The words cul. prist (or prit) were then entered on the roll as showing that issue had been joined. When French law terms were discontinued the words were taken as forming one word addressed to the prisoner. The formula “Culprit, how will you be tried?” in answer to a plea of “not guilty,” is first found in the trial for murder of the 7th earl of Pembroke in 1678.

CULROSS (locally pronounced Coo-rus), a royal and police burgh, Fifeshire, Scotland, 6½ m. W. by S. of Dunfermline and 2½ m. from East Grange station on the North British railway company’s line from Dunfermline to Stirling. Pop. 348. Until 1890 it belonged to the detached portion of Perthshire. Attractively situated on a hillside sloping gently to the Forth, its placid old-world aspect is in keeping with its great antiquity. Here St Serf carried on his missionary labours, and founded a church and cemetery, and here he died and was buried. For centuries the townsfolk used to celebrate his day (July 1st) by walking in procession bearing green boughs. Kentigern, the apostle to Cumbria and first bishop of Glasgow, was born at Culross, his mother having been driven ashore during a tempest, and was adopted by St Serf as his son. These religious associations, coupled with the fertility of the soil, led to the founding of a Cistercian abbey in 1217. Of this structure the only remains are the western tower and the choir, which, greatly altered as well as repaired early in the 19th century, now forms the parish church. It is supposed that a chapel of which some traces exist in the east end of the town was dedicated to Kentigern. James VI. made Culross a royal burgh in 1588. In 1808 there was discovered in the abbey church, embalmed in a silver casket, still preserved there, bearing his name and arms, the heart of Edward, Lord Bruce of Kinloss, who was killed in August 1613 near Bergen-op-Zoom in a duel with Sir Edward Sackville, afterwards earl of Dorset. Robert Pont (1524-1606), the Reformer, was born at Shirresmiln, or Shiresmill, a hamlet in Culross parish. Nearly all its old industries—the coal mines, salt works, linen manufacture, and even the making of iron girdles for the baking of scones—have dwindled, but its pleasant climate and picturesqueness make it a holiday resort. Dunimarle Castle, a handsome structure on the sea-shore, adjoins the site of the castle where, according to tradition, Macbeth slew the wife and children of Macduff. Culross belongs to the Stirling district group of parliamentary burghs.

CULTIVATOR,[1] also called Scuffler, Scarifier or Grubber, an agricultural implement employed in breaking up land or in stirring it after ploughing. The first all-iron cultivator, known as Finlayson’s grubber, was a large harrow with curved teeth carried on wheels, and was brought out about 1820. It was designed to meet the need for some implement of intermediate character between the plough and harrow, which should stir the soil deeply and expeditiously without reversing it, and bring the weeds unbroken to the surface. The chief modern improvement has been the imparting of vibratory movement and hence greater stirring capacity to the tines, either by making them of spring steel or by fitting springs to the point of attachment of the tine to the framework of the machine. In its modern form the implement consists of a framework fitted with rows of curved stems or tines, which may be raised clear of the ground or lowered into work by means of a lever, and differs from the harrow in that it is provided with two wheels, which prevent the tines from embedding themselves too deeply in the soil. The stems may be fitted either with chisel-points or with broad shares, according as it is required to merely stir the soil or to bring up weeds and clean the surface. In the disk cultivator revolving disks take the place of tines. The implement is usually provided with a seat for the driver and is drawn by horses, but steam power is also commonly applied to it, the speed of the operation in that case increasing its effectiveness. The method is the same as that of steam-ploughing (see [Plough]).

[1] From Late Lat. cultivare, through cultivus, from colere, to till, cultivate; whence cultus, worship, form of religion, cult.

CUMAE (Gr. Κύμη), an ancient city of Campania, Italy, about 12 m. W. of Neapolis, on the W. coast of Campania, on a volcanic eminence, overlooking the plain traversed by the Volturno.

There are many legends as to its foundation, but even the actual period of its colonization by the Greeks is so early (ancient authorities give it as 1050 B.C.) that there is some doubt as to who established it, whether Chalcidians from Euboea or Aeolians from Κύμη (Cyme), and it should probably be regarded as a joint settlement. It was certainly, as Strabo says, the oldest of the Greek colonies on the mainland of Italy or in Sicily. Livy tells us (viii. 22) that the settlers first landed on Pithecusae (Ischia) and thence transferred their position to the mainland, which seems a probable story. We find it in 721 B.C. founding Zancle (Messina) in Sicily jointly with Chalcis, and it extended its power gradually over the coast of the Gulf of Puteoli and the harbours of the promontory of Misenum. Puteoli itself under the name Dicaearchia was probably founded by Cumae. In the 7th century, according to the legends, Parthenope, whither the demos of Cumae had taken refuge after an unsuccessful rising against the aristocracy, was attacked by the latter and destroyed, but soon rebuilt under the name of Neapolis (New City, the present Naples).[1] The most fertile portion of the Campanian plain was also under its dominion; the name “fossa Graeca” still lingered on in 205 B.C. to testify to its ancient limits. Cumae was now at the height of its power, and many fine coins testify to its prosperity. In 524 B.C. it was the object of a joint attack by the Etruscans of Capua, the Daunians of the district of Nola, and the Aurunci of the Mons Massicus. A brilliant victory was, however, won in the hilly district outside the town, largely owing to the bravery of Aristodemus, who then led a force to the relief of Aricia, which was being attacked by the Etruscans, and, returning at the head of his victorious army, overturned the aristocracy and made himself tyrant, but was ultimately murdered by the aristocrats. These were unable to repel a renewed Etruscan attack without the help of Hiero of Syracuse, who in the battle of Cumae of 474 B.C. drove the Etruscan fleet from the sea, and broke their power in Campania.

The Samnites finally destroyed the Etruscan supremacy by the capture of Capua in the latter half of the 5th century (see [Capua]; [Campania]), and the Greeks of Cumae were overwhelmed by the same invasion, either in 420 B.C. (Livy iv. 44) or in 421 (Diodor. Sic. xii. 76), if his statement is drawn from Greek sources, 428 if it is to be dated by the Roman consuls to whose year he ascribes it. This catastrophe brought to an end the beautiful series of Greek coins from the town (B. V. Head, Historia Numorum, p. 31), and Oscan became its language, though in many respects the Greek character of the town survived (Strabo v. 4. 3, and the other references given by R. S. Conway, Italic Dialects, p. 84). One or two inscriptions in Oscan survive (id. ib. 88-92), one of which is a Iovila or heraldic dedication. The date of the general disuse of Oscan in the town appears to be fixed about 180 B.C. by the request (Livy xl. 44) which the Cumaeans addressed to Rome that they might be allowed to use Latin for public purposes. Cumae now ceased to have any independent history. It came under the supremacy of Rome in 343 (or 340) as Capua did, obtained the civitas sine suffragio and was governed after 318 by the praefecti Capuam Cumas.

(R. S. C.)

In the Hannibalic wars it remained faithful to Rome. It probably acquired civic rights in the Social War and remained a municipium until Augustus established a colony here. Under the empire it is spoken of as a quiet country town, in contrast to the gay and fashionable Baiae, which, however, with the lacus Avernus and lacus Lucrinus, formed a part of its territory. Cicero’s villa on the east bank of the latter, for example, which he called the Academia, was also known as Cumanum. In the Gothic wars the acropolis of Cumae was, except Naples, the only fortified town in Campania, and it retained its military importance until it was destroyed by the Neapolitans in 1205, since, which time it has been deserted.

The acropolis hill (269 ft. above sea-level), a mass of trachyte which has broken through the surrounding tufa, lies hardly 100 yds. from the low sandy shore. It is traversed by caves, which are at three different levels with many branches. Some of them may belong to a remote date, while others may be quarries, but they have not been thoroughly investigated. They are famous in legend as the seat of the oracle of the Cumaean Sibyl.

The acropolis has only one approach, on the south-east; on all other sides it falls away steeply. Remains of fortifications of all ages run round the edge of the hill; some of the original Greek work, in finely hewn rectangular tufa blocks, exists on the east. The medieval line follows the ancient, except on the N.E., where it takes in a larger area.

Within the acropolis stood the temple of Apollo, erected, according to tradition, by Daedalus himself, the remains of which, restored in Roman times, were discovered in 1817, on the eastern and lower summit. On the higher western summit stood another temple, excavated in 1792, but now covered up again. This may be that of the Olympian Zeus (Liv. xxvii. 23).

There are also various remains of buildings of the imperial period, and these are far more frequent on the site of the lower town (now occupied by vineyards) which lies below the acropolis to the south. The line of the city walls can be traced both on the E. and on the W., though the remains on the E. are insignificant, and on the W. (the seaward side) only the scarping of the hill remains. To the S. of the town, just outside the wall, is the amphitheatre. To the N. of it is the point where the roads from Liternum (the Via Domitiana running along the sandy coast), Capua (a branch of the Via Campana), Misenum and Puteoli meet. The last passes through the Arco Felice, an arch of brick-faced concrete 63 ft. high which spans a cutting through the Monte Grillo, made by Domitian to shorten the course of the road, which had hitherto run farther north. The Grotto della Pace leads to the shores of Avernus. On the E. side of Cumae are considerable remains of the Roman period, among them those of the temple of Demeter, as restored by the family of the Lucceii.

The cemeteries of Cumae extended on all sides of the ancient city, except towards the sea, but the most important lay on the north, between this temple and the Lago di Licola. Excavations during the 19th century in Greek, Samnite and Roman graves have produced many important objects, now in the various museums of Europe, but especially at Naples. Recent discoveries in this necropolis (including that of a circular archaic tomb with a conical roof) have led to considerable discussion as to the true date of the foundation of Cumae, and have made it clear that, in any case, a pre-Hellenic indigenous settlement existed here—a result of great importance.

See J. Beloch, Campanien (Breslau, 1890), 145 seq.; G. Pellegrini, Monumenti dei Lincei, xiii. (1903); G. Patroni, Atti del Congresso di Scienze Storiche (1904), vol. v. p. 215 seq.

(T. As.)

[1] Mommsen, however (Corpus Inscrip. Latin. x., Berlin, 1883, p. 170), rightly throws considerable doubt on the existence of Parthenope and even of Palaeopolis, of which there is some mention in Roman annals; under both he is inclined to trace Cumae itself.

CUMANÁ, a city and port of Venezuela, capital of the state of Bermudez, situated on the Manzanares river about 1 m. above its mouth, 52 ft. above sea-level and 180 m. E. of Caracas. It is the oldest existing European settlement on the South American continent, having been founded by Diego Castellon in 1523 under the name of Nueva Toledo. The city was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake in 1766, and again in 1797. Slight shocks are very frequent, some of them severe enough to cause considerable damage to the buildings. The mean annual temperature is 83° F. and the climate is enervating. In colonial times the city was rich and prosperous and enjoyed a lucrative trade with the mother country, its population at that time being estimated at 30,000, but much of its prosperity has disappeared and its population is now estimated at 10,000. Excellent fruits are produced in its vicinity, and its exports include cacáo, coffee, sugar, hides, tobacco and sundry products in small quantities. A tramway connects the city with its port at the mouth of the Manzanares.

CUMBERLAND, DUKES AND EARLS OF. The earldom of Cumberland was held by the family of Clifford (q.v.) from 1525 to 1643, when it became extinct by the death of Henry, the 5th earl. The 1st earl of Cumberland was Henry, 11th Lord Clifford (1493-1542), a son of Henry, 10th Lord Clifford (c. 1454-1523). Created an earl by Henry VIII. in 1525, Henry remained loyal during the great rising in the north of England in 1536, and died on the 22nd of April 1542. His son and successor, Henry, the 2nd earl (c. 1517-1570), married Eleanor (d. 1547), a daughter of Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, and Mary, daughter of King Henry VII.; he had the tastes of a scholar rather than a soldier, and died early in 1570. By his first wife, Eleanor, he left an only daughter Margaret (1540-1596), who married Henry Stanley, 4th earl of Derby, and who in 1557 was regarded by many as the rightful heiress to the English throne. By his second wife he left two sons and a daughter; his elder son George succeeding to the earldom in 1570, and his younger son Francis succeeding his brother in 1605. George, 3rd earl of Cumberland (1558-1605), was born on the 8th of August 1558, and married Margaret (c. 1560-1616), daughter of his guardian, Francis, 2nd earl of Bedford. Although interested in mathematics and geography he passed his early years in dissipation and extravagance; then he took to the sea, commanded the “Bonaventure” against the Spanish Armada, and from this time until his death on the 30th of October 1605 was mainly engaged in fitting out and leading plundering expeditions, some of which, especially the one undertaken in 1589, gained a large amount of booty. The earl left no sons, and his barony was claimed by his only daughter Anne (1590-1676), the wife successively of Richard Sackville, 3rd earl of Dorset, and of Philip Herbert, 4th earl of Pembroke and Montgomery; while his earldom was inherited by his brother Francis (1559-1641). A long law-suit between the new earl and the countess Anne over the possession of the family estates was settled in 1617. The 5th earl was Francis’s only son Henry (1591-1643), who was born on the 28th of February 1591, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He was a supporter of Charles I. during his two short wars with the Scots, and also during the Civil War until his death on the 11th of December 1643. He left no sons; his earldom became extinct; his new barony of Clifford, created in 1628, passed to his daughter Elizabeth (1618-1691), wife of Richard Boyle, earl of Cork and Burlington; and the Cumberland estates to his cousin Anne, countess of Dorset and Pembroke.

In 1644 the English title of duke of Cumberland was created in favour of Rupert, son of Frederick V., elector palatine of the Rhine, and nephew of Charles I. Having lapsed on Rupert’s death without legitimate issue in 1682, it was created again in 1689 to give an English title to George, prince of Denmark, who had married the lady who afterwards became Queen Anne. It again became extinct when George died in 1708, but was revived in 1726 in favour of William Augustus, third son of George II. As this duke was never married the title lapsed on his death in 1765, but was revived in the following year in favour of Henry Frederick (1745-1790), son of Frederick, prince of Wales, and brother of George III. Having again become extinct on Henry Frederick’s death, the title of duke of Cumberland was created for the fifth time in favour of Ernest Augustus, who was made duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in 1799. In 1837 Ernest (q.v.) became king of Hanover, and on his death in 1851 the title descended with the kingdom of Hanover to his son King George V. (q.v.), and on George’s death in 1878 to his grandson Ernest Augustus (b. 1845). In 1866 Hanover was annexed by Prussia, but King George died without renouncing his rights. His son Ernest, while maintaining his claim to the kingdom of Hanover, is generally known by his title of duke of Cumberland.

CUMBERLAND, RICHARD (1632-1718), English philosopher and bishop of Peterborough, the son of a citizen of London, was born in the parish of St Ann, near Aldersgate. He was educated in St Paul’s school, and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. He took the degree of B.A. in 1653; and, having proceeded M.A. in 1656, was next year incorporated to the same degree in the university of Oxford. For some time he studied medicine; and although he did not adhere to this profession, he retained his knowledge of anatomy and medicine. He took the degree of B.D. in 1663 and that of D.D. in 1680. Among his contemporaries and intimate friends were Dr Hezekiah Burton, Sir Samuel Morland, who was distinguished as a mathematician, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, who became keeper of the great seal, and Samuel Pepys. To this academical connexion he appears to have been in a great measure indebted for his advancement in the Church. When Bridgeman was appointed lord keeper, he nominated Cumberland and Burton as his chaplains, nor did he afterwards neglect the interest of either. Cumberland’s first preferment, bestowed upon him in 1658 by Sir John Norwich, was the rectory of Brampton in Northamptonshire. In 1661 he was appointed one of the twelve preachers of the university. The lord keeper, who obtained his office in 1667, invited him to London, and soon afterwards bestowed upon him the rectory of Allhallows at Stamford, where he acquired new credit by the fidelity with which he discharged his duties. In addition to his ordinary work he undertook the weekly lecture. This labour he constantly performed, and in the meantime found leisure to prosecute his scientific and philological studies.

At the age of forty he published his earliest work, entitled De legibus naturae disquisitio philosophica, in qua earum forma, summa capita, ordo, promulgatio, el obligatio e rerum natura investigantur; quin etiam elementa philosophiae Hobbianae, cum moralis tum civilis, considerantur et refutantur (London, 1672). It is dedicated to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, and is prefaced by an “Alloquium ad Lectorem,” contributed by Dr Burton. It appeared during the same year as Pufendorf’s De jure naturae et gentium, and was highly commended in a subsequent publication by Pufendorf, whose approbation must have had the effect of making it known on the continent. Having thus established a solid reputation, Cumberland next prepared a work on a very different subject—An Essay towards the Recovery of the Jewish Measures and Weights, comprehending their Monies; by help of ancient standards, compared with ours of England: useful also to state many of those of the Greeks and Romans, and the Eastern Nations (London, 1686). This work, dedicated to Pepys, obtained a copious notice from Leclerc, and was translated into French.

About this period he was depressed by apprehensions respecting the growth of Popery; but his fears were dispelled by the Revolution, which brought along with it another material change in his circumstances. One day in 1691 he went, according to his custom on a post-day, to read the newspaper at a coffee-house in Stamford, and there, to his surprise, he read that the king had nominated him to the bishopric of Peterborough. The bishop elect was scarcely known at court, and he had resorted to none of the usual methods of advancing his temporal interest.

“Being then sixty years old,” says his great-grandson, “he was with difficulty persuaded to accept the offer, when it came to him from authority. The persuasion of his friends, particularly Sir Orlando Bridgeman, at length overcame his repugnance; and to that see, though very moderately endowed, he for ever after devoted himself, and resisted every offer of translation, though repeatedly made and earnestly recommended. To such of his friends as pressed an exchange upon him he was accustomed to reply, that Peterborough was his first espoused, and should be his only one.”

He discharged his new duties with energy and kept up his episcopal visitations till his eightieth year. His charges to the clergy are described as plain and unambitious, the earnest breathings of a pious mind. When Dr Wilkins (David Wilke) published the New Testament in Coptic he presented a copy to the bishop, who began to study the language at the age of eighty-three. “At this age,” says his chaplain, “he mastered the language, and went through great part of this version, and would often give me excellent hints and remarks, as he proceeded in reading of it.” He died in 1718, in the eighty-seventh year of his age; he was found sitting in his library, in the attitude of one asleep, and with a book in his hand.[1] His great-grandson was Richard Cumberland, the dramatist.

Bishop Cumberland was distinguished by his gentleness and humility. He could not be roused to anger, and spent his days in unbroken serenity. The basis of his ethical theory is Benevolence, and is the natural outcome of his temperament. He was a man of a sound understanding, improved by extensive learning, and left behind him several monuments of his talents and industry. His favourite motto was that a man had better “wear out than rust out.”

The philosophy of Cumberland is expounded in the treatise De legibus naturae. The merits of the work are almost confined to its speculative theories; its style is destitute of strength and grace, and its reasoning is diffuse and unmethodical. Its main design is to combat the principles which Hobbes had promulgated as to the constitution of man, the nature of morality, and the origin of society, and to prove that self-advantage is not the chief end of man, that force is not the source of personal obligation to moral conduct nor the foundation of social rights, and that the state of nature is not a state of war. The views of Hobbes seem to Cumberland utterly subversive of religion, morality and civil society, and he endeavours, as a rule, to establish directly antagonistic propositions. He refrains, however, from denunciation, and is a fair opponent up to the measure of his insight.

Laws of nature are defined by him as “immutably true propositions regulative of voluntary actions as to the choice of good and the avoidance of evil, and which carry with them an obligation to outward acts of obedience, even apart from civil laws and from any considerations of compacts constituting government.” This definition, he says, will be admitted by all parties. Some deny that such laws exist, but they will grant that this is what ought to be understood by them. There is thus common ground for the two opposing schools of moralists to join issue. The question between them is, Do such laws exist or do they not? In reasoning thus Cumberland obviously forgot what the position maintained by his principal antagonist really was. Hobbes must have refused to accept the definition proposed. He did not deny that there were laws of nature, laws antecedent to government, laws even in a sense eternal and immutable. The virtues as means to happiness seemed to him to be such laws. They precede civil constitution, which merely perfects the obligation to practise them. He expressly denied, however, that “they carry with them an obligation to outward acts of obedience, even apart from civil laws and from any consideration of compacts constituting governments.” And many besides Hobbes must have felt dissatisfied with the definition. It is ambiguous and obscure. In what sense is a law of nature a “proposition”? Is it as the expression of a constant relation among facts, or is it as the expression of a divine commandment? A proposition is never in itself an ultimate fact although it may be the statement of such a fact. And in what sense is a law of nature an “immutably true” proposition? Is it so because men always and everywhere accept and act on it, or merely because they always and everywhere ought to accept and act on it? The definition, in fact, explains nothing.

The existence of such laws may, according to Cumberland, be established in two ways. The inquirer may start either from effects or from causes. The former method had been taken by Grotius, Robert Sharrock (1630-1684) and John Selden. They had sought to prove that there were universal truths, entitled to be called laws of nature, from the concurrence of the testimonies of many men, peoples and ages, and through generalizing the operations of certain active principles. Cumberland admits this method to be valid, but he prefers the other, that from causes to effects, as showing more convincingly that the laws of nature carry with them a divine obligation. It shows not only that these laws are universal, but that they were intended as such; that man has been constituted as he is in order that they might be. In the prosecution of this method he expressly declines to have recourse to what he calls “the short and easy expedient of the Platonists,” the assumption of innate ideas of the laws of nature. He thinks it ill-advised to build the doctrines of natural religion and morality on a hypothesis which many philosophers, both Gentile and Christian, had rejected, and which could not be proved against Epicureans, the principal impugners of the existence of laws of nature. He cannot assume, he says, that such ideas existed from eternity in the divine mind, but must start from the data of sense and experience, and thence by search into the nature of things discover their laws. It is only through nature that we can rise to nature’s God. His attributes are not to be known by direct intuition. He, therefore, held that the ground taken up by the Cambridge Platonists could not be maintained against Hobbes. His sympathies, however, were all on their side, and he would do nothing to diminish their chances of success. He would not even oppose the doctrine of innate ideas, because it looked with a friendly eye upon piety and morality. He granted that it might, perhaps, be the case that ideas were both born with us and afterwards impressed upon us from without.

Cumberland’s ethical theory (see [Ethics]) is summed up in his principle of universal Benevolence, the one source of moral good. “No action can be morally good which does not in its own nature contribute somewhat to the happiness of men.” The theory is important in comparison (1) with that of Hobbes, and (2) with modern utilitarianism.

1. Cumberland’s Benevolence is, deliberately, the precise antithesis to the Egoism of Hobbes. To this fact it owes its existence and also its extravagance. Feeling that the most forcible method of attacking Hobbes was to assert the opposite in the same form, he maintained that the whole-hearted pursuit of the good of all contributes to the good of each and brings personal happiness; that the opposite process involves misery to individuals including the self. If, then, Hobbes went to the one extreme of postulating selfishness as the sole motive of human action, Cumberland was equally extravagant as regards Benevolence. The testimony of history shows, prima facie at least, that both motives have operated throughout, and just as self-interest has been increasingly modified by conscious benevolence, so benevolence alone does not explain all personal virtue nor love to God. But it is essential to notice that Cumberland never appealed to the evidence of history, although he believed that the law of universal benevolence had been accepted by all nations and generations; and he carefully abstains from arguments founded on revelation, feeling that it was indispensable to establish the principles of moral right on nature as a basis. His method was the deduction of the propriety of certain actions from the consideration of the character and position of rational agents in the universe. He argues that all that we see in nature is framed so as to avoid and reject what is dangerous to the integrity of its constitution; that the human race would be an anomaly in the world had it not for end its conservation in its best estate; that benevolence of all to all is what in a rational view of the creation is alone accordant with its general plan; that various peculiarities of man’s body indicate that he has been made to co-operate with his fellow men and to maintain society; and that certain faculties of his mind show the common good to be more essentially connected with his perfection than any pursuit of private advantage. The whole course of his reasoning proceeds on, and is pervaded by, the principle of final causes.

2. To the question, What is the foundation of rectitude?, he replies, the greatest good of the universe of rational beings. He may be regarded as the founder of English utilitarianism, but his utilitarianism is distinct from what is known as the selfish system; it goes to the contrary extreme, by almost absorbing individual in universal good. Nor does it look merely to the lower pleasures, the pleasures of sense, for the constituents of good, but rises above them to include especially what tends to perfect, strengthen and expand our true nature. Existence and the extension of our powers of body and mind are held to be good for their own sakes without respect to enjoyment. Cumberland’s views on this point were long abandoned by utilitarians as destroying the homogeneity and self-consistency of their theory; but J. S. Mill and some recent writers have reproduced them as necessary to its defence against charges not less serious than even inconsistency.

The answer which Cumberland gives to the question, Whence comes our obligation to observe the laws of nature?, is that happiness flows from obedience, and misery from disobedience to them, not as the mere results of a blind necessity, but as the expressions of the divine will. Reward and punishment, supplemented by future retribution, are, in his view, the sanctions of the laws of nature, the sources of our obligation to obey them. To the other great ethical question, How are moral distinctions apprehended?, he replies that it is by means of right reason. But by right reason he means merely the power of rising to general laws of nature from particular facts of experience. It is no peculiar faculty or distinctive function of mind; it involves no original element of cognition; it begins with sense and experience; it is gradually generated and wholly derivative. This doctrine lies only in germ in Cumberland, but will be found in full flower in Hartley, Mackintosh and later associationists.

Bibliography.—Editions of the De legibus naturae (Lübeck, 1683 and 1694); English versions by John Maxwell, prebendary of Connor, A Treatise of the Laws of Nature (London, 1727), and John Towers (Dublin, 1750); French translation by Jean Barbeyrac (Amsterdam, 1744); James Tyrrell (1642-1718), grandson of Archbishop Ussher, published an abridgment of Cumberland’s views in A Brief Disquisition of the Laws of Nature according to the Principles laid down in the Rev. Dr Cumberland’s Latin Treatise (London, 1692; ed. 1701). For biographical details see Squier Payne, Account of the Life and Writings of R. Cumberland (London, 1720); Cumberland’s Memoirs (1807), i. 3-6; Pepys’s Diary. For his philosophy, see E. Albee, Philosophical Review, iv. 3 (1895), pp. 264 and 371; F. E. Spaulding, R. Cumberland als Begründer der englischen Ethik (Leipzig, 1894); and text-books on ethics.

[1] The care of his posthumous publications devolved upon his domestic chaplain and son-in-law, Squier Payne, who soon after the bishop’s death edited “Sanchoniato’s Phoenician History, translated from the first book of Eusebius, De praeparatione evangelica: with a continuation of Sanchoniato’s history of Eratosthenes Cyrenaeus’s Canon, which Dicaearchus connects with the first Olympiad. These authors are illustrated with many historical and chronological remarks, proving them to contain a series of Phoenician and Egyptian chronology, from the first man to the first Olympiad, agreeable to the Scripture accounts” (London, 1720). The preface contains an account of the life, character and writings of the author, which was likewise published in a separate form, and exhibits a pleasing picture of his happy old age. A German translation appeared under the title of Cumberlands phönizische Historie des Sanchoniathons, übersetzt von Joh. Phil. Cassel (Magdeburg, 1755). The sequel to the work was likewise published by Payne—Origines gentium antiquissimae; or Attempts for discovering the Times of the First Planting of Nations: in several Tracts (London, 1724).

CUMBERLAND, RICHARD (1732-1811), English dramatist, was born in the master’s lodge of Trinity College, Cambridge, on the 19th of February 1732. He was the great-grandson of the bishop of Peterborough; and his father, Dr Denison Cumberland, became successively bishop of Clonfert and of Kilmore. His mother was Joanna, the youngest daughter of the great scholar Richard Bentley, and the heroine of John Byrom’s once popular little eclogue, Colin and Phoebe. Of the great master of Trinity his grandson has left a kindly account; he afterwards collected all the pamphlets bearing on the Letters of Phalaris controversy, and piously defended the reputation of his ancestor in his Letter to Bishop Lowth, who had called Bentley “aut caprimulgus aut fossor.” Cumberland was in his seventh year sent to the grammar-school at Bury St Edmunds, and he relates how, on the head-master Arthur Kinsman undertaking, in conversation with Bentley, to make the grandson as good a scholar as the grandfather himself, the latter retorted: “Pshaw, Arthur, how can that be, when I have forgot more than thou ever knewest?” Bentley died during his grandson’s Bury schooldays; and in 1744 the boy, who, while rising to the head of his school, had already begun to “try his strength in several slight attempts towards the drama,” was removed to Westminster, then at the height of its reputation under Dr Nicholls. Among his schoolfellows here were Warren Hastings, George Colman (the elder), Lloyd, and (though he does not mention them as such) Churchill and Cowper. From Westminster Cumberland passed, in his fourteenth year, to Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1750 he took his degree as tenth wrangler. His account of his degree examination, as well as that for a fellowship at his college, part of which he underwent in the “judges’ chamber,” where he was born, is curious; he was by virtue of an alteration in the statutes elected to his fellowship in the second year of his degree.

Meanwhile his projects of work as a classical scholar had been interspersed with attempts at imitating Spenser—whom, by his mother’s advice, he “laid upon the shelf”—and a dramatic effort (unprinted) on the model of Mason’s Elfrida, called Caractacus. He had just begun to read for his fellowship, when he was offered the post of private secretary by the earl of Halifax, first lord of trade and plantations in the duke of Newcastle’s ministry. His family persuaded him to accept the office, to which he returned after his election as fellow. It left him abundant leisure for literary pursuits, which included the design of a poem in blank verse on India. He resigned his Trinity fellowship on his marriage—in 1759—to his cousin Elizabeth Ridge, to whom he had paid his addresses on receiving through Lord Halifax “a small establishment as crown-agent for Nova Scotia.” In 1761 he accompanied his patron (who had been appointed lord-lieutenant) to Ireland as Ulster secretary; and in acknowledgment of his services was afterwards offered a baronetcy. By declining this he thinks he gave offence; at all events, when in 1762 Halifax became secretary of state, Cumberland in vain applied for the post of under-secretary, and could only obtain the clerkship of reports at the Board of Trade under Lord Hillsborough. While he takes some credit to himself for his incorruptibility when in Ireland, he showed zeal for his friend and secured a bishopric for his father. On the accession to office of Lord George Germaine (Sackville) in 1775, Cumberland was appointed secretary to the Board of Trade and Plantations, which post he held till the abolition of that board in 1782 by Burke’s economical reform. Before this event he had, in 1780, been sent on a confidential mission to Spain, to negotiate a separate treaty of peace with that power; but though he was well received by King Charles III. and his minister Floridablanca, the question of Gibraltar proved a stumbling-block, and the Gordon riots at home a most untoward occurrence. He was recalled in 1781, and was refused repayment of the expenses he had incurred, towards which only £1000 had been advanced to him. He thus found himself £4500 out of pocket: in vain, he says, “I wearied the door of Lord North till his very servants drove me from it”; his memorial remained unread or unnoticed either by the prime minister or by secretary Robinson, through whom the original promise had been made. Soon after this experience he lost his office, and had to retire on a compensation allowance of less than half-pay. He now took up his residence at Tunbridge Wells; but during his last years he mostly lived in London, where he died on the 7th of May 1811. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a short oration being pronounced on this occasion by his friend Dean Vincent.

Cumberland’s numerous literary productions are spread over the whole of his long life; but it is only by his contributions to the drama, and perhaps by his Memoirs, that he is likely to be remembered. The collection of essays and other pieces entitled The Observer (1785), afterwards republished together with a translation of The Clouds, found a place among The British Essayists. For the accounts given in The Observer of the Greek writers, especially the comic poets, Cumberland availed himself of Bentley’s MSS. and annotated books in his possession; his translations from the Greek fragments, which are not inelegant but lack closeness, are republished in James Bailey’s Comicorum Graecorum (part i., 1840) and Hermesianactis, Archilochi, et Pratinae fragmenta. Cumberland further produced Anecdotes of Eminent Painters in Spain (1782 and 1787); a Catalogue of the King of Spain’s Paintings (1787); two novels—Arundel (1789), a story in letters, and Henry (1795), a “diluted comedy” on the construction and polishing of which he seems to have expended great care; a religious epic, Calvary, or the Death of Christ (1792); his last publication was a poem entitled Retrospection. He is also supposed to have joined Sir James Bland Burges in an epic, the Exodiad (1807), and in John de Lancaster, a novel. Besides these he wrote the Letter to the Bishop of O[xfor]d in vindication of Bentley (1767); another to the Bishop of Llandaff (Richard Watson) on his proposal for equalizing the revenues of the Established Church (1783); a Character of the late Lord Sackville (1785), whom in his Memoirs he vindicates from the stigma of cowardice; and an anonymous pamphlet, Curtius rescued from the Gulf, against the redoubtable Dr Parr. He was also the author of a version of fifty of the Psalms of David; of a tract on the evidences of Christianity; and of other religious exercises in prose and verse, the former including “as many sermons as would make a large volume, some of which have been delivered from the pulpits.” Lastly, he edited, in 1809, a short-lived critical journal called The London Review, intended to be a rival to the Quarterly, with signed articles.

Cumberland’s Memoirs, which he began at the close of 1804, and concluded in September 1805, were published in 1806, and a supplement was added in 1807. This narrative, which includes a long account of his Spanish mission, contains some interesting reminiscences of several persons of note—more especially Bubb Dodington, Single-Speech Hamilton, and Lord George Sackville among politicians, and of Garrick, Foote and Goldsmith; but the accuracy of some of the anecdotes concerning the last-named is not beyond suspicion. The book exhibits its author as an amiable egotist, careful of his own reputation, given to prolixity and undistinguished by wit, but a good observer of men and manners. The uneasy self-absorption which Sheridan immortalized in the character of Sir Fretful Plagiary in The Critic is apparent enough in this autobiography, but presents itself there in no offensive form. The incidental criticisms of actors have been justly praised.

Cumberland was hardly warranted in the conjecture that no English author had yet equalled his list of dramas in point of number; but his plays, published and unpublished, have been computed to amount to fifty-four. About 35 of these are regular plays, to which have been added 4 operas and a farce; and about half of the whole list are comedies. The best known of them belong to what he was pleased to term “legitimate comedy,” and to that species of it known as “sentimental.” The essential characteristic of these plays is the combination of plots of domestic interest with the rhetorical enforcement of moral precepts, and with such small comic humour as the author possesses. These comedies are primarily, to borrow Cumberland’s own phraseology, designed as “attempts upon the heart.” He takes great credit to himself for weaving his plays out of “homely stuff, right British drugget,” and for eschewing “the vile refuse of the Gallic stage”; on the other hand, he borrowed from the sentimental fiction of his own country, including Richardson, Fielding and Sterne. The favourite theme of his plays is virtue in distress or danger, but safe of its reward in the fifth act; their most constant characters are men of feeling and young ladies who are either prudes or coquettes. Cumberland’s comic power—such as it was—lay in the invention of comic characters taken from the “outskirts of the empire,” and professedly intended to vindicate from English prejudice the good elements in the Scotch, the Irish and the colonial character. For the rest, patriotic sentiment liberally asserts itself by the side of general morality. If Cumberland’s dialogue lacks brilliance and his characters reality, the construction of the plots is as a rule, skilful, and the situations are contrived with what Cumberland indisputably possessed—a thorough insight into the secrets of theatrical effect. It should be added that, though Cumberland’s sentimentality is often wearisome, his morality is generally sound; that if he was without the genius requisite for elevating the national drama, he did his best to keep it pure and sweet; and that if he borrowed much, as he undoubtedly did, it was not the vicious attractions of other dramatists of which he was the plagiary.

His début as a dramatic author was made with a tragedy, The Banishment of Cicero, published in 1761 after its rejection by Garrick; this was followed in 1765 by a musical drama, The Summer’s Tale, subsequently compressed into an afterpiece Amelia (1768). Cumberland first essayed sentimental comedy in The Brothers (1769). The theme of this comedy is inspired by Fielding’s Tom Jones; its comic characters are the jolly old tar Captain Ironsides, and the henpecked husband Sir Benjamin Dove, whose progress to self-assertion is genuinely comic, though not altogether original. Horace Walpole said that it acted well, but read ill, though he could distinguish in it “strokes of Mr Bentley.” The epilogue paid a compliment to Garrick, who helped the production of Cumberland’s second comedy The West-Indian (1771). The hero of this comedy, which probably owes much to the suggestion of Garrick, is a young scapegrace fresh from the tropics, “with rum and sugar enough belonging to him to make all the water in the Thames into punch,”—a libertine with generous instincts, which in the end prevail. This early example of the modern drame was received with the utmost favour; it was afterwards translated into German by Boden, and Goethe acted in it at the Weimar court. The Fashionable Lover (1772) is a sentimental comedy of the most pronounced type. The Choleric Man (1774), founded on the Adelphi of Terence, is of a similar type, the comic element rather predominating, but philanthropy being duly represented by a virtuous lawyer called Manlove. Among his later comedies may be mentioned The Natural Son (1785), in which Major O’Flaherty who had already figured in The West-Indian, makes his reappearance; The Impostors (1789), a comedy of intrigue; The Box Lobby Challenge (1794), a protracted farce; The Jew (1794), a serious play, highly effective when the character of Sheva was played by the great German actor Theodor Döring; The Wheel of Fortune (1795), in which John Kemble found a celebrated part in the misanthropist Penruddock, who cannot forget but learns to forgive (a character declared by Kotzebue to have been stolen from his Menschenhass und Reue), while the lawyer Timothy Weasel was made comic by Richard Suett; First Love (1795); The Last of the Family (1795); False Impressions (1797); The Sailor’s Daughter (1804); and a Hint to Husbands (1806), which, unlike the rest, is in blank verse. The other works printed during his lifetime include The Note of Hand (1774), a farce; the songs of his musical comedy, The Widow of Delphi (1780); his tragedies of The Battle of Hastings (1778); and The Carmelite (1784), a romantic domestic drama in blank verse, in the style of Home’s Douglas, furnishing some effective scenes for Mrs Siddons and John Kemble as mother and son; and the domestic drama (in prose) of The Mysterious Husband (1783). His posthumously printed plays (published in 2 vols. in 1813) include the comedies of The Walloons (acted in 1782); The Passive Husband (acted as A Word for Nature, 1798); The Eccentric Lover (acted 1798); and Lovers’ Resolutions (once acted in 1802); the serious quasi-historic drama Confession; the drama Don Pedro (acted 1796); and the tragedies of Alcanor (acted as The Arab, 1785); Torrendal; The Sibyl, or The Elder Brutus (afterwards amalgamated with other plays on the subject into a very successful tragedy for Edmund Kean by Payne); Tiberius in Capreae; and The False Demetrius (on a theme which attracted Schiller). Cumberland translated the Clouds of Aristophanes (1797), and altered for the stage Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens (1771), Massinger’s The Bondman and The Duke of Milan (both 1779).

In 1806-1807 appeared Memoirs of R. Cumberland, written by himself. Cumberland’s novel, Henry, was printed in Ballantyne’s Novelists’ Library (1821), with a prefatory notice of the author by Sir Walter Scott. A so-called Critical Examination of Cumberland’s works and a memoir of the author based oh his autobiography, with the addition of some more or less feeble criticisms, by William Madford, appeared in 1812. An excellent account of Cumberland is included in “George Paston’s” Little Memoirs of the Eighteenth Century (1901). Hettner well characterizes Cumberland’s position in the history of the English drama in Litteraturgesch. d. 18. Jahrhunderts (2nd ed., 1865), i. 520. Cumberland’s portrait by Romney (whose talent he was one of the first to encourage) is in the National Portrait Gallery.

(A. W. W.)

CUMBERLAND, WILLIAM AUGUSTUS, Duke of (1721-1765), son of King George II. and Queen Caroline, was born on the 15th of April 1721, and when five years of age was created duke of Cumberland. His education was well attended to, and his courage and capacity in outdoor exercises were notable from his early years. He was intended by the king and queen for the office of lord high admiral, and in 1740 he sailed as a volunteer in the fleet under the command of Sir John Norris; but he quickly became dissatisfied with the navy, and early in 1742 he began a military career. In December 1742 he was made a major-general, and in the following year he first saw active service in Germany. George II. and the “martial boy” shared in the glory of Dettingen (June 27), and Cumberland, who was wounded in the action, displayed an energy and valour, the report of which in England founded his military popularity. After the battle he was made lieutenant-general. In 1745, having been made captain-general of the British land forces at home and in the field, the duke was again in Flanders as commander-in-chief of the allied British, Hanoverian, Austrian and Dutch troops. Advancing to the relief of Tournay, which was besieged by Marshal Saxe, he engaged that great general in the battle of Fontenoy (q v.) on the 11th of May. It cannot now be doubted that, had the duke been supported by the allies in his marvellously courageous attack on the superior positions of the French army, Fontenoy would not have been recorded as a defeat to the British arms. He himself was in the midst of the heroic column which penetrated the French centre, and his conduct of the inevitable retreat was unusually cool and skilful.

Notwithstanding the severity of his discipline, the young duke had the power to inspire his men with a strong attachment to his person and a very lively esprit de corps. As a general his courage and resolution were not sufficiently tempered with sagacity and tact; but he displayed an energy and power in military affairs which pointed him out to the British people as the one commander upon whom they could rely to put a decisive stop to the successful career of Prince Charles Edward in the rebellion of 1745-1746. John (Earl) Ligonier wrote of him at this time: “Ou je suis fort trompé ou il se forme là un grand capitaine.”

He was recalled from Flanders, and immediately proceeded with his preparations for quelling the insurrection. He joined the midland army under Sir John Ligonier, and was at once in pursuit of his swift-footed foe. But the retreat of Charles Edward from Derby disconcerted his plans; and it was not till they had reached Penrith, and the advanced portion of his army had been repulsed on Clifton Moor, that he became aware how hopeless an attempt to overtake the retreating Highlanders would then be. Carlisle having been retaken, he retired to London, till the news of the defeat of Hawley at Falkirk roused again the fears of the English people, and centred the hopes of Britain on the royal duke. He was appointed commander of the forces in Scotland.

Having arrived in Edinburgh on the 30th of January 1746, he at once proceeded in search of the young Pretender. He diverged, however, to Aberdeen, where he employed his time in training the well-equipped forces now under his command for the peculiar nature of the warfare in which they were about to engage. What the old and experienced generals of his time had failed to accomplish or even to understand, the young duke of Cumberland, as yet only twenty-four years of age, effected with simplicity and ease. He prepared to dispose his army so as to withstand with firmness that onslaught on which all Highland successes depended; and he reorganized the forces and restored their discipline and self-confidence in a few weeks.

On the 8th of April 1746 he set out from Aberdeen towards Inverness, and on the 15th he fought the decisive battle of Culloden, in which, and in the pursuit which followed, the forces of the Pretender were completely destroyed. He had become convinced that the sternest measures were needed to break down the Jacobitism of the Highlanders. He told his troops to take notice that the enemy’s orders were to give no quarter to the “troops of the elector,” and they took the hint. No trace of such orders remains (see [Murray, Lord George]), and it is probable that Cumberland had merely received word of wild talk in the enemy’s camp, which he credited the more easily as he thought that those who were capable of rebellion were capable of any crime. On account of the merciless severity with which the fugitives were treated, Cumberland received the nickname of the “Butcher.” That the implied taunt was unjust need not be laboured. It was used for political purposes in England, and his own brother, the prince of Wales, encouraged, it appears, the virulent attacks which were made upon the duke. In any case there is a marked similarity between Cumberland’s conduct in Scotland and that of Cromwell in Ireland. Both dared to do acts which they knew would be cast against them for the rest of their lives, and terrorized an obstinate and unyielding enemy into submission. How real was the danger of a protracted guerrilla warfare in the Highlands may be judged from the explicit declarations of Jacobite leaders that they intended to continue the struggle. As it was, the war came to an end almost at once. Here, as always, Cumberland preserved the strictest discipline in his camp. He was inflexible in the execution of what he deemed to be his duty, without favour to any man. At the same time he exercised his influence in favour of clemency in special cases that were brought to his notice. Some years later James Wolfe spoke of the duke as “for ever doing noble and generous actions.”

The relief occasioned to Britain by the duke’s victorious efforts was acknowledged by his being voted an income of £40,000 per annum in addition to his revenue as a prince of the royal house. The duke took no part in the Flanders campaign of 1746, but in 1747 he again opposed the still victorious Marshal Saxe; and received a heavy defeat at the battle of Lauffeld, or Val, near Maestricht (2nd of July 1747). During the ten years of peace Cumberland occupied himself chiefly with his duties as captain-general, and the result of his work was clearly shown in the conduct of the army in the Seven Years’ War. His unpopularity, which had steadily increased since Culloden, interfered greatly with his success in politics, and when the death of the prince of Wales brought a minor next in succession to the throne the duke was not able to secure for himself the contingent regency, which was vested in the princess-dowager of Wales. In 1757, the Seven Years’ War having broken out, Cumberland was placed at the head of a motley army of allies to defend Hanover. At Hastenbeck, near Hameln, on the 26th of July 1757, he was defeated by the superior forces of D’Estrées (see [Seven Years’ War]). In September of the same year his defeat had almost become disgrace. Driven from point to point, and at last hemmed in by the French under Richelieu, he capitulated at Klosterzeven on the 8th of the month, agreeing to disband his army and to evacuate Hanover. His disgrace was completed on his return to England by the king’s refusal to be bound by the terms of the duke’s agreement. In chagrin and disappointment he retired into private life, after having formally resigned the public offices he held. In his retirement he made no attempt to justify his conduct, applying in his own case the discipline he had enforced in others. For a few years he lived quietly at Windsor, and subsequently in London, taking but little part in politics. He did much, however, to displace the Bute ministry and that of Grenville, and endeavoured to restore Pitt to office. Public opinion had now set in his favour, and he became almost as popular as he had been in his youth. Shortly before his death the duke was requested to open negotiations with Pitt for a return to power. This was, however, unsuccessful. On the 31st of October 1765 the duke died.

A Life of the duke of Cumberland by Andrew Henderson was published in 1766, and anonymous (Richard Rolt) Historical Memoirs appeared in 1767. See especially A. N. Campbell Maclachlan, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1876).

CUMBERLAND, the north-westernmost county of England, bounded N. by the Scottish counties of Dumfries and Roxburgh, E. by Northumberland, S. by Westmorland and Lancashire, and W. by the Irish Sea. Its area is 1520.4 sq m. In the south the county includes about one-half of the celebrated Lake District (q.v.), with the highest mountain in England, Scafell Pike (3210 ft.), and the majority of the principal lakes, among which are Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite, Buttermere and Crummock Water, Ennerdale, Wastwater, and, on the boundary with Westmorland, Ullswater. From this district valleys radiate north, west and south to a flat coastal belt, the widest part of which (about 8 m.) is found in the north in the Solway Plain, bordering Solway Firth, which here intervenes between England and Scotland. The valley of the Eden, opening upon this plain from the south-east, separates the mountainous Lake District from the straight westward face of a portion of the Pennine Chain (q.v.), which, though little of it lies within this county, reaches its highest point within it in Cross Fell (2930 ft.). A well-marked pass, called the Tyne Gap, at the water-parting between the rivers Irthing and South Tyne, traversed by the Newcastle & Carlisle railway, intervenes between these hills and their northward continuation in the hills of the Scottish border. Besides the waters of the Eden, Solway Firth receives those of the Esk, which enter Cumberland from Scotland. Liddel Water, joining this river from the north east from Liddisdale, forms a large part of the boundary with Scotland. The Eden receives the Irthing from the east, and from the Lake District the Caldew, rising beneath Skiddaw and joining the main river at Carlisle, and the Eamont, draining Ullswater and forming part of the boundary with Westmorland. The principal streams flowing east and south from the Lake District are the Derwent, from Borrowdale and Derwentwater, the Eden from Ennerdale, the Esk from Eskdale, and the Duddon, forming the greater part of the boundary with Lancashire. There are valuable salmon fisheries in the Eden, and trout are taken in many of the streams and lakes.

Geology.—The mountainous portion of Cumberland is built up of two different types of rock. The older, a sedimentary slaty series of Ordovician age, the Skiddaw slates, surrounds Bassenthwaite, Saddleback, Crummock Water, Keswick and Cockermouth and the western end of Ennerdale Water. The same formation is found in the northern flanks of Ullswater also north and east of Whitbeck. The other type of rock is volcanic; it gives a more rugged aspect to the scenery, as may be seen in comparing the rough outlines of Scafell and Honister Crags or Helvellyn with the smoother form of Saddleback or Skiddaw. These volcanic rocks, owing to much alteration, are often slaty; they have been called the “green slates and porphyries” or the Borrowdale Series. The Skiddaw slates are usually separated from the newer green slates above them by a plane of differential movement, for both have been thrust by earth-pressures from south to north, but the former rocks have travelled farther than the latter which have lagged behind; hence Messrs Marr and Harker describe the plane of separation as a “lag-fault.” Much general faulting and folding have resulted from the movement; the thrusting took place in Devonian times. About the same period great masses of granitic rock were intruded into the slates in the form of laccolites, which often lie along the lag planes. Such rocks are the granophyre hills of Buttermere and Ennerdale, the microgranite patches on either side of the Vale of St John, and the great mass of Eskdale granite which reaches from Wastwater to the flanks of Black Combe. At Carrock Fell, N.E. of Skiddaw, is an extremely interesting complex of volcanic rocks, and in many other places are diabase and other forms, e.g. the well-known rock at Castle Head, Keswick.

From Pooley Bridge, Ullswater, on the east, by Udale round to Egremont on the west, the mountainous region just described, is surrounded by the Carboniferous Limestone series, with a conglomerate at the base. Upon these rocks the coalfield of Whitehaven rests and extends as far as Maryport. The coal seams are worked for some distance beneath the sea. The vale of Eden between Penrith, Hornsby and Wreay is occupied by Permian sandstone, usually bright red in colour. Red Triassic rocks form a strip about 4 m. broad east of the Permian outcrop; a similar strip forms a coastal fringe from St Bees Head to Duddon Sands. The same formations are spread out round Carlisle, Brampton, Longtown, Wigton and Aspatria. East of Carlisle they are covered by an outlier of Lias. A great dislocation, the Pennine Fault, runs along the eastern side of the vale of Eden; it throws up the Lower Carboniferous limestones with their associated shales and sandstones to form the elevated ground in the north and north-east of the county. Several basic intrusions penetrate the limestone series, the best known being the Whin Sill, which may be traced for a number of miles northward from Crossfell. Evidences of glacial action are abundant; till with sands and gravel lie on the lower ground; striated rocks and roches moutonnées are common; perched blocks are found on the plateau by Sprinkling Tarn and elsewhere. Moraine mounds are quite numerous in the valleys, and have frequently been the cause of small lakes.

Climate and Agriculture.—The climate is generally temperate, but in the higher parts bleak, snow sometimes lying fully six months of the year on Cross Fell and the mountains of the Lake District. As regards rainfall, the physical configuration makes for contrast. At Carlisle, on the Solway plain, the mean annual fall is 30.6 in. At Penrith, on the north-eastern flank of the Lake District, it is 31.67; on the western flank 42.3 in. are recorded at Ravenglass, close to the coast, and 51.78 at Cockermouth, some miles inland. In the heart of the district, however, the fall is as a rule much heavier, in fact, the heaviest recorded in the British Isles (see [Lake District]). Somewhat less than three-fifths of the total area of the county is under cultivation, the proportion being higher than that of the neighbouring counties of Northumberland and Westmorland, but still much below the average of the English counties. Black peaty earth is the most prevalent soil in the mountainous districts; but dry loams occur in the lowlands, and are well adapted to green crops, grain and pasture. Wheat and barley are practically neglected, but large crops of oats are grown. Turnips and swedes form the bulk of the green crops. Hill pasture amounts to nearly 270,000 acres, and a good number of cattle are reared, but the principal resource of the farmer is sheep-breeding. The sheep on the lowland farms are generally of the Leicester class or cross-bred between the Leicester and Herdwick, with a few Southdowns. Throughout the mountainous districts the Herdwicks have taken the place of the smaller black-faced heath variety of sheep once so commonly met with on the sheep farms. They are peculiar to this part of England; the ewes and wethers and many of the rams are polled, the faces and legs are speckled, and the wool is finer and heavier in fleece than that of the heath breed. They originally came from the neighbourhood of Muncaster in the Duddon and Esk district, and tradition ascribes their origin variously to introduction by Scandinavian settlers, or to parents that escaped from a wrecked ship of the Spanish Armada. In general they belong to the proprietors of the sheep-walks, and have been farmed out with them from time immemorial, from which circumstance it is said they obtained the name of “Herdwicks.” Long after the Norman Conquest Cumberland remained one of the most densely forested regions of England, and much of the low-lying land is still well wooded, the Lake District in particular displaying beautiful contrasts between bare mountain and tree-clad valley. The oak, ash and birch are the principal natural trees, while sycamores have been planted for shelter round many farmsteads. Plantations of larch are also numerous, and the holly, yew, thorn and juniper flourish locally.

Landed property was formerly much divided in this county, and the smaller holdings were generally occupied by their owners, who were known as “statesmen,” i.e. “estatesmen,” a class of men long noted for their sturdy independence and attachment to routine husbandry. Most of these estates were held of the lords of manors under customary tenure, which subjected them to the payments of fines and heriots on alienation as well as on the death of the lord or tenant. According to the Agricultural Survey printed in 1794, about two-thirds of the county was held by this tenure, in parcels worth from £15 to £30 rental. On large estates, also, the farms were in general rather small, few then reaching £200 a year, held on verbal contracts, or very short leases, and burdened like the small estates with payments or services over and above a money rent. In modern times these conditions have changed, the “statesmen” gradually becoming extinct as a class, and many of the small holdings falling into the hands of the larger landed proprietors.

Other Industries.—Carlisle is the seat of a variety of manufactures; there are also in the county cotton and woollen industries, pencil mills at Keswick, and iron shipbuilding yards at Whitehaven. But the mining industry is the most important, coal being raised principally in the district about Whitehaven, Workington and Maryport. Side by side with this industry much iron ore is raised, and there is a large output of pig-iron, and ore is also found in the south, in the neighbourhood of Millom. Gypsum, zinc and some lead are mined. Copper was formerly worked near Keswick, and there was a rich deposit of black lead at the head of Borrowdale. Granite and limestone are extensively quarried. Stone is very largely used even for housebuilding, a fine green slate being often employed. Shap and other granites are worked for building and roadstones.

Communications.—The chief ports of Cumberland are Whitehaven, Workington, Maryport, Harrington and Silloth. The London & North-Western railway enters the county near Penrith, and terminates at Carlisle, which is also served by the Midland. The Caledonian, North British and Glasgow & South-Western lines further serve this city, which is thus an important junction in through communications between England and Scotland. The North-Eastern railway connects Carlisle with Newcastle. The Maryport & Carlisle, the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith, and the Cleator & Workington Junction lines serve the districts indicated by their names, while the Furness railway passes along the west coast from the district of Furness in Lancashire as far north as Whitehaven, also serving Cleator and Egremont. The Ravenglass & Eskdale light railway gives access from this system to Boot in Eskdale. Coaches and motor cars maintain passenger communications in the Lake District where the railways do not penetrate.

Population and Administration.—The area of the ancient and the administrative county is 973,086 acres, with a population in 1891 of 266,549 and in 1901 of 266,933. The county contains five wards, divisions which in this and neighbouring counties correspond to hundreds, and also appear in Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire in Scotland. The municipal boroughs are Carlisle (pop. 45,480), a city and the county town, Whitehaven (19,324), and Workington (26,143). The other urban districts are Arlecdon and Frizington (5341), Aspatria (2885), Cleator Moor (8120), Cockermouth (5355), Egremont (5761), Harrington (3679), Holme Cultram (4275), Keswick (4451), Maryport (11,897), Millom (10,426), Penrith (9182), Wigton (3692). Of these all except Keswick, Millom and Penrith are in the industrial district of the west and north-west. The urban district of Holme Cultram includes the port of Silloth. Among lesser towns may be mentioned St Bees (1236), on the coast south of Whitehaven, until 1897 the seat of a Church of England theological college. The grammar school here, founded in 1533, is liberally endowed, with scholarships and exhibitions. Cumberland is in the northern circuit, and assizes are held at Carlisle. It has one court of quarter sessions and 12 petty sessional divisions. The city of Carlisle has a separate commission of the peace and court of quarter sessions. There are 213 civil parishes. Cumberland is in the diocese of Carlisle, with a small portion in that of Newcastle. There are 167 ecclesiastical parishes or districts within the county. There are four parliamentary divisions, the Northern or Eskdale, Mid or Penrith, Cockermouth and Western or Egremont, each returning one member; while the parliamentary boroughs of Carlisle and Whitehaven each return one member.

History.—After the withdrawal of the Romans (of whose occupation there are various important relics in the county) little is known of the region which is now Cumberland, until the great battle of Ardderyd in 573 resulted in its consolidation with the kingdom of Strathclyde. About 670-680 the western district between the Solway and the Mersey was conquered by the Angles of Northumbria and remained an integral portion of that kingdom until the Danish invasion of the 9th century. In 878 the kingdom of the Cumbri is referred to, but without any indication of its extent, and the first mention of Cumberland to denote a geographical area occurs in 945 when it was ceded by Edmund to Malcolm of Scotland. At this date it included the territory north and south of the Solway from the Firth of Forth to the river Duddon. The Scottish supremacy was not uninterrupted, for the district at the time of its invasion by Ethelred in 1000 was once more a stronghold of the Danes, whose influence is clearly traceable in the nomenclature of the Lake District. At the time of the Norman invasion Cumberland was a dependency of the earldom of Northumbria, but its history at this period is very obscure, and no notice of it occurs in the Domesday Survey of 1086; Kirksanton, Bootle and Whicham, however, are entered under the possessions of the earl of Northumbria in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The real Norman conquest of Cumberland took place in 1092, when William Rufus captured Carlisle, repaired the city, built the castle, and after sending a number of English husbandmen to till the land, placed the district under the lordship of Ranulf Meschines. The fief of Ranulf was called the Power or Honour of Carlisle, and a sheriff of Carlisle is mentioned in 1106. The district was again captured by the Scots in the reign of Stephen, and on its recovery in 1157 the boundaries were readjusted to include the great barony of Coupland. At this date the district was described as the county of Carlisle, and the designation county of Cumberland is not adopted in the sheriff’s accounts until 1177. The five present wards existed as administrative areas in 1278, when they were termed bailiwicks, the designation ward not appearing until the 16th century, though the bailiwicks of the Forest of Cumberland are termed wards in the 14th century. In the 17th and 18th centuries each of the five wards was under the administration of a chief constable.

Owing to its position on the Border Cumberland was the scene of constant warfare from the time of its foundation until the union of England and Scotland, and families like the Tilliols, the Lucies, the Greystokes, and the Dacres were famous for their exploits in checking or avenging the depredations of the Scots. During the War of Independence in the reign of Edward I. Carlisle was the headquarters of the English army. In the Wars of the Roses the prevailing sympathy was with the Lancastrian cause, which was actively supported by the representatives of the families of Egremont, Dacre and Greystoke. In 1542 the Scottish army under James V. suffered a disastrous defeat at Solway Moss. After the union of the crowns of England and Scotland in 1603, the countries hitherto known as “the Borders” were called “the Middle Shires,” and a period of comparative peace ensued. On the outbreak of the Civil War of the 17th century the northern counties associated in raising forces for the king, and the families of Howard, Dalston, Dacre and Musgrave rendered valuable service to the royalist cause. In 1645 Carlisle was captured by the parliamentary forces, but in April 1648 it was retaken by Sir Philip Musgrave and Sir Thomas Glenham, and did not finally surrender until the autumn of 1648. Cumberland continued, however, to support the Stuarts; it was one of the first counties to welcome back Charles II.; in 1715 it was associated with the rising on behalf of the Pretender, and Carlisle was the chief seat of operations in the 1745 rebellion.

In 685 Carlisle and the surrounding district was annexed by Ecgfrith king of Northumbria to the diocese of Lindisfarne, to which it continued subject, at least until the Danish invasion of the 9th century. In 1133 Henry I. created Carlisle (q.v.) a bishopric. The diocese included the whole of modern Cumberland (except the barony of Coupland and the parishes of Alston, Over-Denton and Kirkandrews), and also the barony of Appleby in Westmorland. The archdeaconry of Carlisle, co-extensive with the diocese, comprised four deaneries. Coupland was a deanery in the archdeaconry of Richmond and diocese of York until 1541, when it was annexed to the newly created diocese of Chester. In 1856 the area of the diocese of Carlisle was extended, so as to include the whole of Cumberland except the parish of Alston, the whole of Westmorland, and the Furness district of Lancashire. In 1858 the deaneries were made to number eighteen, and in 1870 were increased to twenty.

The principal industries of Cumberland have been from earliest times connected with its valuable fisheries and abundant mineral wealth. The mines of Alston and the iron mines about Egremont were worked in the 12th century. The Keswick copper mines were worked in the reign of Henry III., but the black-lead mine was not worked to any purpose until the 18th century. Coal-mining is referred to in the 15th century, and after the revival of the mining industries in the 16th century, rose to great importance. The saltpans about the estuaries of the Esk and the Eden were a source of revenue in the 12th century.

Cumberland returned three members for the county to the parliament of 1290, and in 1295 returned in addition two members for the city of Carlisle and two members each for the boroughs of Cockermouth and Egremont. The boroughs did not again return members until in 1640 Cockermouth regained representation. Under the Reform Act of 1832, Cumberland returned four members for two divisions, and Whitehaven returned one member. The county now returns six members to parliament; one each for the four divisions of the county, Egremont, Cockermouth, Eskdale and Penrith, one for the city of Carlisle and one for the borough of Whitehaven.

Antiquities.—Very early crosses, having Celtic or Scandinavian characteristics, are seen at Gosforth, Bewcastle and elsewhere. In ecclesiastical architecture Cumberland is not rich as a whole, but it possesses Carlisle cathedral, with its beautiful choir, and certain monastic remains of importance. Among these are the fine remnants of Lanercost priory (see [Brampton]). Calder Abbey, near Egremont, a Cistercian abbey founded in 1134, has ruins of the church and cloisters, of Norman and Early English character, and is very beautifully situated on the Calder. The parish Church of St Bees, with good Norman and Early English work, belonged to a Benedictine priory of 1120; but according to tradition the first religious house here was a nunnery founded c. 650 by St Bega, who became its abbess. Among the parish churches there are a few instances of towers strongly fortified for purposes of defence; that at Burgh-on-the-Sands, near Carlisle, being a good illustration. Castles, in some cases ruined, in others modernized, are fairly numerous, both near the Scottish border and elsewhere. Naworth Castle near Brampton is the finest example; others are at Bewcastle, Carlisle, Kirkoswald, Egremont, Cockermouth and Millom. Among many notable country seats, Rose Castle, the palace of the bishops of Carlisle; Greystoke Castle and Armathwaite Hall may be mentioned.

See J. Nicolson and R. Burn, History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland (London, 1777); W. Hutchinson, History of Cumberland (Carlisle, 1794); S. Jefferson, History and Antiquities of Cumberland (Carlisle, 1840-1842); S. Gilpin, Songs and Ballads of Cumberland (London, 1866); W. Dickinson, Glossary of Words and Phrases of Cumberland (London, English Dialect Society, 1878, with a supplement, 1881); Sir G. F. Duckett, Early Sheriffs of Cumberland (Kendal, 1879); J. Denton, “Account of Estates and Families in the County of Cumberland, 1066-1603,” in Antiquarian Society’s Transactions (1887); R. S. Ferguson, History of Cumberland (London, 1890); “Archaeological Survey of Cumberland,” in Archaeologia, vol. liii. (London, 1893); W. Jackson, Papers and Pedigrees relating to Cumberland (2 vols., London, 1892); T. Ellwood, The Landnama Book of Iceland as it illustrates the Dialect and Antiquities of Cumberland (Kendal, 1894); Victoria County History, Cumberland; and Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society.

CUMBERLAND, a city and the county-seat of Allegany county, Maryland, U.S.A., on the Potomac river, about 178 m. W. by N. of Baltimore and about 153 m. S. by E. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 12,729; (1900) 17,128, of whom 1113 were foreign-born and 1100 were of negro descent; (1910) 21,839. Cumberland is served by the Baltimore & Ohio, the Western Maryland, the Pennsylvania, the Cumberland & Pennsylvania (from Cumberland to Piedmont, Virginia), and the George’s Creek & Cumberland railways, the last a short line extending to Lonaconing (19 m.); by an electric line extending to Western Port, Maryland; and by the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, of which it is a terminus. The city is about 635 ft. above sea-level, and from a distance appears to be completely shut in by lofty ranges of hills, which are cut through to the westward by a deep gorge called “The Narrows,” making a natural gateway of great beauty. Cumberland has a large trade in coal, which is mined in the vicinity. As a manufacturing centre it ranked in 1905 second in the state, the chief products being iron, steel, bricks, flour, cement, silk and leather; there is also a large dyeing and cleaning establishment. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $2,900,267 in 1900 to $4,595,023 in 1905, or 58.4%. Cumberland is an important jobbing centre also. The municipality owns and operates its water-works and electric lighting plant. The first settlement of the place was made in 1750; in 1754 Fort Cumberland was erected within what are now the city limits, and in the year following this fort was occupied by General Edward Braddock. Cumberland was laid out in 1763, but there was little growth until 1787, and it was not incorporated as a town until 1815; it was chartered as a city in 1850.

CUMBERLAND, a township of Providence county, Rhode Island, U.S.A., in the N.E. part of the state, about 6 m. N. of Providence and having the Blackstone river for most of its W. boundary. Pop. (1890) 8090; (1900) 8925, of whom 3473 were foreign-born; (1910) 10,107; area, 27.5 sq. m. It is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway. Within its borders are the villages of Cumberland Hill, Diamond Hill, Arnold Mills, Abbott Run, Berkeley, Robin Hollow, Happy Hollow, East Cumberland, and parts of Manville, Ashton, Lonsdale and Valley Falls. The surface of the township is generally hilly and rocky. In the N. part is a valuable granite quarry; and limestone, and some coal, iron and gold are also found. Cumberland has been called the “mineral pocket of New England.” The Blackstone and its tributaries provide considerable water power; and there are various manufactures, including cotton goods, silk goods, and horse-shoes and other iron ware. The value of the township’s factory product in 1905 was $3,171,318, an increase of 80.6% since 1900, this ratio of increase being greater than that shown by any other “municipality” in the state having a population in 1900 of 8000 or more. At Lonsdale, William Blackstone (c. 1595-1675), the first permanent white settler within the present limits of Rhode Island, built his residence, “Study Hall,” about 1635. Cumberland was originally a part of Rehoboth, and then of Attleborough, Massachusetts, and for many years was called, like other sparse settlements, the Gore, or Attleborough Gore. In 1747, by the royal decree establishing the boundary between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Attleborough Gore, with other territory formerly under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, was annexed to Rhode Island, and the township of Cumberland was incorporated, the name being adopted in honour of William Augustus, duke of Cumberland. In 1867 a part of Cumberland was set off to form the township of Woonsocket.

CUMBERLAND MOUNTAINS (or more correctly the Cumberland Plateau or Highlands), the westernmost of the three great divisions of the Appalachian uplift in the United States, composed of many small ranges of mountains (of which Cumberland Mountain in eastern Kentucky is one). It extends from Pennsylvania to Alabama, attaining its greatest height (about 4000 ft.) in Virginia. The plateau is rich in a variety of mineral products, of which special mention may be made of coal, which occurs in many places, and of the beautiful marbles quarried in that portion of the plateau which lies between Virginia and Kentucky and crosses Tennessee. The plateau has an abrupt descent, almost an escarpment, into the great Appalachian Valley on its E., while the W. slope is deeply and roughly broken. The whole mass is eroded in Virginia into a maze of ridges. Cumberland Mountain parts the waters of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. This range and the other ranges about it are perhaps the loveliest portion of the whole plateau. The peaks here and in the Blue Ridge to the E. are the highest of the Appalachian system. Forest-filled valleys, rounded hills and rugged gorges afford in every part scenery of surpassing beauty. The Cumberland Valley between the Cumberland range and the Pine range is one of special fame. In the former range there are immense caverns and subterranean streams. Cumberland Gap, crossing the ridge at about 167 ft. above the sea, where Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee meet, is a gorge about 500 ft. deep, with steep sides that barely give room in places for a roadway. The mountains, river and gap were all discovered by a party of Virginians in 1748, and named in honour of the victor of Culloden, William, duke of Cumberland. Afterwards the gap gained a place in American history as one of the main pathways by which emigrants crossed the mountains to Kentucky and Tennessee. During the Civil War it was a position of great strategic importance, as it afforded an entrance to eastern and central Tennessee from Kentucky, which was held by the Union arms; and it was repeatedly occupied in alternation by the opposing forces.

The mountaineers of Kentucky and Tennessee are a strange stock, who retain in their customs and habits the primitive conditions of a life that has elsewhere long since disappeared. They have been pictured in the novels of Miss Murfree and John Fox, Junr. They are a tall, straight, angular folk, of fine physical development; the volunteers for the Union army from Kentucky and Tennessee during the Civil War—most of whom came from the non-slave-holding mountain region—exceeded in physical development the volunteers from all other states. For the education of these mountaineers Major-General Oliver Otis Howard founded in 1895 at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, the Lincoln Memorial University (co-educational; non-sectarian; opened in 1897), which has collegiate, normal training and industrial courses, and an affiliated school of medicine, Tennessee Medical College, at Knoxville. The university had in 1907-1908 14 instructors and 570 students. Berea College in Kentucky was a pioneer institution for the education of mountaineers.

CUMBERLAND RIVER, a large southern branch of the Ohio river, U.S.A., rising in the highest part of the Cumberland plateau in south-east Kentucky, and emptying into the Ohio in Kentucky (near Smithland) after a devious course of 688 m. through that state and Tennessee. It drains a basin of somewhat more than 18,000 sq. m., and is navigable for light-draught steamers through about 500 m. under favourable conditions—Burnside, Pulaski county, 518 m. from the mouth, is the head of navigation—and through 193 m.—to Nashville—all the year round; for boats drawing not more than 3 ft. the river is navigable to Nashville for 6 to 8 months. At the Great Falls, in Whitley county, Kentucky, it drops precipitously 63 ft. Above the falls it is a mountain stream, of little volume in the dry months. It descends rapidly at its head to the highland bench below the mountains and traverses this to the falls, then flows in rapids (the Great Shoals) for some 10 m. through a fine gorge with cliffs 300-400 ft. high, and descends between bluffs of decreasing height and beauty into its lower level. Save in the mountains its gradient is slight, and below the falls, except for a number of small rapids, the flow of the stream is equable. Timbered ravines lend charm to much of its shores, and in the mountains the scenery is most beautiful. Below Nashville the stream is some 400 to 500 ft. wide, and its high banks are for the most part of alluvium, with rocky bluffs at intervals. At the mouth of the river lies Cumberland Island, in the Ohio. During low water of the latter stream the Cumberland discharges around both ends of the island, but in high water of the Ohio the gradient of the Cumberland is so slight that its waters are held back, forming a deep quiet pool that extends some 20 m. up the river. A system of locks and dams below Nashville was planned in 1846 by a private company, which accomplished practically nothing. Congress appropriated $155,000 in 1832-1838; in the years immediately after 1888 $305,000 was expended, notably for deepening the shoals at the junction of the Cumberland and the Ohio; in 1892 a project was undertaken for 7 locks and dams 52 ft. wide and 280 ft. long below Nashville. Above Nashville $346,000 was expended on the open channel project (of 1871-1872) from Nashville to Cumberland Ford (at Pineville); in 1886 a canalization project was undertaken and 22 locks and dams below Burnside and 6 above Burnside were planned, but by the act of 1907 the project was modified—$2,319,000 had been appropriated up to 1908 for the work of canalization. During the Civil War Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, and Fort Henry near by on the Tennessee were erected by the Confederates, and their capture by Flag-officer A. H. Foote and General Grant (Feb. 1862) was one of the decisive events of the war, opening the rivers as it did for the advance of the Union forces far into Confederate Territory.

CUMBRAES, THE, two islands forming part of the county of Bute, Scotland, lying in the Firth of Clyde, between the southern shores of Bute and the coast of Ayrshire. Great Cumbrae Island, about 1½ m. W.S.W. of Largs, is 3¾ m. long and 2 m. broad, and has a circumference of 10 m. and an area of 3200 acres or 5 sq. m. Its highest point is 417 ft. above the sea. There is some fishing and a little farming, but the mainstay of the inhabitants is the custom of the visitors who crowd every summer to Millport, which is reached by railway steamer from Largs. This town (pop. 1901, 1663) is well situated at the head of a fine bay and has a climate that is both warm and bracing. Its chief public buildings include the cathedral, erected in Gothic style on rising ground behind the town, the college connected with it, the garrison, a picturesque seat belonging to the marquess of Bute, who owns the island, the town hall, a public hall, library and reading room, the Lady Margaret fever hospital, and a marine biological station. The cathedral, originally the collegiate church, was founded in 1849 by the earl of Glasgow and opened in 1851. In 1876 it was constituted the cathedral of Argyll and the Isles. Millport enjoys exceptional facilities for boating and bathing, and there is also a good golf-course. Pop. (1901) 1754, of whom 1028 were females, and 59 spoke both English and Gaelic. Little Cumbrae Island lies to the south, separated by the Tan, a strait half a mile wide. It is 1¾ m. long, barely 1 m. broad, and has an area of almost a square mile. Its highest point is 409 ft. above sea-level. On the bold cliffs of the west coast stands a lighthouse. Robert II. is said to have built a castle on the island which was demolished by Cromwell’s soldiers in 1653.

The strata met with in the Great and Little Cumbrae belong to the Upper Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous systems. The former, consisting of false-bedded sandstones and conglomerates, are confined to the larger island. The Carboniferous rocks of the Cumbrae belong to the lower part of the Calciferous Sandstone series with the accompanying volcanic zone. In the larger island these sediments, comprising sandstones, red, purple and mottled clays with occasional bands of nodular limestone or cornstone, occupy a considerable area on the north side of Millport Bay. In the Little Cumbrae they appear on the east side, where they underlie and are interbedded with the lavas. The interesting geological feature of these islands is the development of Lower Carboniferous volcanic rocks. They cover nearly the whole of the Little Cumbrae, where they give rise to marked terraced features and are arranged in a gentle synclinal fold. The flows are often scoriaceous at the top and sometimes display columnar structure, as in the crags at the lighthouse. Those rocks examined microscopically consist of basalts which are often porphyritic. In Great Cumbrae the intrusive rocks mark four periods of eruption, three of which may be of Carboniferous age. The oldest, consisting of trachytes, occur as sheets and dikes trending generally E.N.E., and are confined chiefly to the Upper Old Red Sandstone. They seem to be of older date than the Carboniferous lavas of Little Cumbrae and south Bute. Next come dikes of olivine basalt of the type of the Lion’s Haunch on Arthur’s Seat, which, though possessing the same general trend as the trachytes, are seen to cut them. The members of the third group comprise dikes of dolerite or basalt with or without olivine, which have a general east and west trend, and as they intersect the two previous groups they must be of later date. They probably belong to the east and west quartz dolerite dikes which are now referred to late Carboniferous time. Lastly there are representatives of the basalt dikes of Tertiary age with a north-west trend.

CUMIN, or Cummin (Cuminum Cyminum), an annual herbaceous plant, a member of the natural order Umbelliferae and probably a native of some part of western Asia, but scarcely known at the present time in a wild state. It was early cultivated in Arabia, India and China, and in the countries bordering the Mediterranean. Its stem is slender and branching, and about a foot in height; the leaves are deeply cut, with filiform segments; the flowers are small and white. The fruits, the so-called seeds, which constitute the cumin of pharmacy, are fusiform or ovoid in shape and compressed laterally; they are two lines long, are hotter to the taste, lighter in colour, and larger than caraway seeds, and have on each half nine fine ridges, overlying as many oil-channels or vittae. Their strong aromatic smell and warm bitterish taste are due to the presence of about 3% of an essential oil. The tissue of the seeds contains a fatty oil, with resin, mucilage and gum, malates and albuminous matter; and in the pericarp there is much tannin. The volatile oil of cumin, which may be separated by distillation of the seed with water, is mainly a mixture of cymol or cymene, C10H14, and cumic aldehyde, C6H4(C3H7)COH. Cumin is mentioned in Isaiah xxviii. 25, 27, and Matthew xxiii. 23, and in the works of Hippocrates and Dioscorides. From Pliny we learn that the ancients took the ground seed medicinally with bread, water or wine, and that it was accounted the best of condiments as a remedy for squeamishness. It was found to occasion pallor of the face, whence the expression of Horace, exsangue cuminum (Epist. i. 19), and that of Persius, pallentis grana cumini (Sat. v. 55). Pliny relates the story that it was employed by the followers of Porcius Latro, the celebrated rhetorician, in order to produce a complexion such as bespeaks application to study (xx. 57). In the middle ages cumin was one of the commonest spices of European growth. Its average price per pound in England in the 13th and 14th centuries was 2d. or, at present value, about 1s. 4d. (Rogers, Hist. of Agric. and Prices, i. 631). It is stimulant and carminative, and is employed in the manufacture of curry powder. The medicinal use of the drug is now confined to veterinary practice. Cumin is exported from India, Mogador, Malta and Sicily.

CUMMERBUND, a girdle or waistbelt (Hindostani kamar-band, a loin-band). In the East the principle of health is to keep the head cool and the stomach warm; the turban protects the one from the sun, and the cummerbund ensures the other against changes of temperature. In India the cummerbund consists of many folds of muslin or bright-coloured cloth.

CUMMING, JOSEPH GEORGE (1812-1868), English geologist and archaeologist, was born at Matlock in Derbyshire on the 15th of February 1812. He was educated at Oakham grammar school, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, taking the degree of M.A., and entering holy orders in 1835. In 1841 he was appointed vice-principal of King William’s College, Castletown, in the Isle of Man, and this position he held until 1856. During this period his leisure time was devoted to a study of the geology and archaeology of the island. The results were published in a classic volume The Isle of Man; its History, Physical, Ecclesiastical, Civil and Legendary (1848). In 1856 he became master of King Edward’s grammar school at Lichfield, in 1858 warden and professor of classical literature and geology in Queen’s College, Birmingham, in 1862 rector of Mellis, in Suffolk, and in 1867 vicar of St John’s, Bethnal Green, London. He died in London on the 21st of September 1868.

CUMNOCK AND HOLMHEAD, a police burgh of Ayrshire, Scotland, on the Lugar, 33¾ m. S. of Glasgow by road, with two stations (Cumnock and Old Cumnock) on the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 3088. It lies in the parish of Old Cumnock (pop. 5144), and is a thriving town, with a town hall, cottage hospital, public library and an athenaeum. Coal and ironstone are extensively mined in the neighbourhood, and the manufactures include woollens, tweeds, agricultural implements and pottery. When Alexander Peden (1626-1686), the persecuted Covenanter, died, he was buried in the Boswell aisle of Auchinleck church; but his corpse was borne thence with every indignity by a company of dragoons to the foot of the gallows at Cumnock, where they intended to hang it in chains. This proving to be impracticable they buried it at the gallows-foot. After the Revolution the inhabitants out of respect for the “Prophet’s” memory abandoned their then burying-ground and turned the old place of execution into the present cemetery. Five miles S.E. lies the parish of New Cumnock (pop. 5367) at the confluence of Afton Water and the Nith. It is rich in minerals, iron, coal, limestone and freestone, and has a station on the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Two miles N.W. of Cumnock is Auchinleck (pronounced Affleck), with a station on the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Coal and iron mining and farming are important industries. It is the seat of the Boswell family, three generations of which abbreviated greatness—Lord Auchinleck, the judge (who dubbed Dr Johnson “Ursa Major”), his son James, the biographer, and his grandson Sir Alexander, the author of “Gude nicht and joy be wi’ you a’,” “Jenny’s Bawbee,” “Jenny dang the weaver,” and other songs and poems, who perished miserably in a duel. Pop. of Auchinleck parish (1901) 6605.

CUNARD, SIR SAMUEL, Bart. (1787-1865), British civil engineer, founder of the Cunard line of steam-ships, was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the 21st of November 1787. He was the son of a merchant, and was himself trained for the pursuits of commerce, in which, by his abilities and enterprising spirit, he attained a conspicuous position. When, in the early years of steam navigation, the English government made known its desire to substitute steam vessels for the sailing ships then employed in the mail service between England and America, Cunard heartily entered into the scheme, came to England, and accepted the government tender for carrying it out. In conjunction with Messrs Burns of Glasgow and Messrs MacIver of Liverpool, proprietors of rival lines of coasting steamers between Glasgow and Liverpool, he formed a company, and the first voyage of a Cunard steamship was successfully made by the “Britannia” from Liverpool to Boston, U.S.A., between July 4 and 19, 1840 (see Steamship Lines). In acknowledgment of his energetic and successful services Cunard was, in 1859, created a baronet. He died in London on the 28th of April 1865.

CUNAS, a tribe of Central American Indians. Their home is the Isthmus of Panama, from the Chagres to the Atrato. They are sometimes called Darien or San Blas Indians. They are a small active people, with remarkably light complexions.

CUNDINAMARCA, till 1909 a department of the eastern plateau of Colombia, South America, having the departments of Quesada and Tundama on the N., Tolima on the W. and S., and the Meta territory on the S.E. and E. The territorial redistribution of 1905 deprived Cundinamarca of its territories on the eastern plains, and a part of its territory in the Eastern Cordillera out of which Quesada and the Federal district were created—its area being reduced from 79,691 to 5060 sq. m., and its estimated population from 500,000 to 225,000. A considerable part of its area consists of plateaus enjoying a temperate climate and producing the fruits and cereals of the temperate zone, and another important part lies in the valley of the Magdalena and is tropical in character. The district of Fusagasuga in the southern part of this region is celebrated for the excellence of its coffee. The capital of the department was Facatativá (est. population, 7500), situated on the western margin of the sabana of Bogotá, 25 m. N.W. from that capital by rail. Other important towns are Caqueza, Sibaté, La Meza and Tocaima.

CUNEIFORM (from Lat. cuneus, a wedge), a form of writing, extensively used in the ancient world, especially by the Babylonians and Assyrians. The word “cuneiform” was first applied in 1700 by Thomas Hyde, professor of Hebrew in the university of Oxford, in the expression “dactuli pyramidales seu cuneiformes,” and it has found general acceptance, though efforts have been made to introduce the expression “arrow-headed” writing. The name “cuneiform” is fitting, for each character or sign is composed of a wedge (

or

), or a combination of wedges (

), written from left to right. The wedge is always pointed towards the right (

) or downwards (

) or aslant (

), or two may be so combined as to form an angle (

) called by German Assyriologists a Winkelhaken, a word now sometimes adopted by English writers on the subject. The word cuneiform has passed into most modern languages, but the Germans use Keilschrift (i.e. wedge-script) and the Arabs mismārī (

) or nail-writing.

In Persia, 40 m. N.E. of Shiraz, is a range of hills, Mount Rachmet, in front of which, in a semicircular form, rises a vast terrace-like platform. It is partly natural, but was walled up in front, levelled off and used as the base Discovery and decipherment. of great temples and palaces. The earliest European, at present known to us, who visited the site was a wandering friar Odoricus (about A.D. 1320), who does not seem to have noticed the inscriptions cut in the stone. These were first observed by Josaphat Barbaro, a Venetian traveller, about 1472. In 1621 the ruins were visited by Pietro della Valle, who was the first to copy a few of the signs, which he sent in a letter to a friend in Naples. His copy was not well made, but it served the useful purpose of directing attention to an unknown script which was certain to attract scholars to the problem of its decipherment. To this end it was necessary that complete inscriptions and not merely separate signs should be made accessible to European scholars. The first man to attempt to satisfy this need was Sir John Chardin, in whose volumes of travels published at Amsterdam in 1711 one of the small inscriptions found at the ruins of Persepolis was carefully and accurately reproduced. It was now plainly to be seen, as indeed others had surmised, that these inscriptions at Persepolis had been written in three languages, distinguished each from other by an increasing complexity in the signs with which they were written. The three languages have since been determined as Persian, Susian and Babylonian. But before the decipherment could begin it was necessary that all the available material should be copied and published. The honour of performing this great task fell to Carsten Niebuhr, who visited Persepolis in March 1765, and in three weeks and a half copied all the texts, so well that little improvement has been made in them since. When Niebuhr returned to Denmark he studied carefully the little inscriptions and convinced himself that the guesses of some of his predecessors were correct, and that the inscriptions were to be read from left to right. He observed that three systems of writing were discernible, and that these were always kept distinct in the inscriptions. He did not, however, draw the natural conclusion that they represented three languages, but supposed that the proud builders of Persepolis had written their inscriptions in threefold form. He divided the little inscriptions into three classes, according to the manner of their writing, calling them classes I., II. and III. He then arranged all those he had copied that belonged to class I., and by careful comparison decided that in them there were employed altogether but forty-two signs. These he copied out and set in order in one of his plates. This list of signs was so nearly complete and accurate that later study has made but slight changes in it. When Niebuhr had made his list of signs he naturally enough decided that this language, whatever it might be, was written in alphabetic characters, a conclusion which later investigation has not overthrown. Beyond this Niebuhr was not able to go, and not even one sign revealed its secret to his inquiry. When, however, he had published his copies (in 1777) there were other scholars ready to take up the difficult task. Two scholars independently, Olav Tychsen of Rostock and Friedrich Münter of Copenhagen, began work upon the problem. Tychsen first observed that there occurred at irregular intervals in the inscriptions of the first class a wedge that pointed neither directly to the right nor downward, but inclined diagonally. This he suggested was the dividing sign used to separate words. This very simple discovery later became of great importance in the hands of Münter. Tychsen also correctly identified the alphabetic signs for “a,” “d,” “u” and “s,” but he failed to decipher an entire inscription, chiefly perhaps because, through an error in history, he supposed that they were written during the Parthian dynasty (246 B.C.-A.D. 227). Münter was more fortunate than Tychsen in his historical researches, and this made him also more successful in linguistic attempts. He rightly identified the builders of Persepolis with the Achaemenian dynasty, and so located in time the authors of the inscriptions (538-465 B.C.). Independently of Tychsen he identified the oblique wedge as a divider between words, and found the meaning of the sign for “b.” These may appear to be small matters, but it must be remembered that they were made without the assistance of any bilingual text, and were indeed taken bodily out of the gloom which had settled upon these languages centuries before. They did not, however, bring us much nearer to the desired goal of a reading of any portion of the inscriptions. The whole case indeed seemed now perilously near a stalemate. New methods must be found, and a new worker, with patience, persistence, power of combination, insight, the historical sense and the feeling for archaeological indications.

In 1802 Georg Friedrich Grotefend (q.v.) was persuaded by the librarian of Göttingen University to essay the task. He began with the assumption that there were three languages, and that of these the first was ancient Persian, the language of the Achaemenians, who had erected these palaces and caused these inscriptions to be written. For his first attempts at decipherment he chose two of these old Persian inscriptions and laid them side by side. They were of moderate length, and the frequent recurrence of the same signs in them seemed to indicate that their contents were similar. The method which he now pursued was so simple, yet so sure, as he advanced step by step, that there seemed scarcely a chance of error. Münter had observed in all the Persian texts a word which occurred in two forms, a short and a longer form. This word appeared in Grotefend’s two texts in both long and short forms. Münter had suggested that it meant “king” in the short form and “kings” in the longer, and that when the two words occurred together the expression meant “king of kings.” But further, this word occurred in both inscriptions in the first line, and in both cases was followed by the same word. This second word Grotefend supposed to mean “great,” the combined expression being “king great,” that is, “great king.” All this found support in the phraseology of the lately deciphered Sassanian inscriptions, and it was plausible in itself. It must, however, be supported by definite facts, and furthermore each word must be separated into its alphabetic parts, every one of them identified, and the words themselves be shown to be philologically possible by the production of similar words in related languages. In other words, the archaeological method must find support in a philological method. To this Grotefend now devoted himself with equal energy. His method was as simple as before. He had made out to his own satisfaction the titles “great king, king of kings.” Now, in the Sassanian inscriptions, the first word was always the king’s name, followed immediately by “great king, king of kings,” and Grotefend reasoned that this was probably true in his texts. But if true, then these two texts were set up by two different kings, for the names were not the same at the beginning. Furthermore the name with which his text No. I. began appears in the third line of text No. II., but in a somewhat longer form, which Grotefend thought was a genitive and meant “of N.” It followed the word previously supposed to be “king” and another which might mean son (N king son), so that the whole expression would be “son of N king.” From these facts Grotefend surmised that in these two inscriptions he had the names of three rulers, grandfather, father and son. It was now easy to search the list of the Achaemenian dynasty and to find three names which would suit the conditions, and the three which he ventured to select were Hystaspes, Darius, Xerxes. According to his hypothesis the name at the beginning of inscription I. was Darius, and he was ready to translate his texts in part as follows:—

The form which he provisionally adopted for Darius was Darheush; later investigation has shown that it ought really to be read as Daryavush, but the error was not serious, and he had safely secured at least the letters D, A, R, SH. It was a most wonderful achievement, the importance of which he did not realize, for in it was the key to the decipherment of three ancient languages. To very few men has it been given to make discoveries so important both for history and for philology.

To Grotefend it was, however, not given to translate a whole text, or even to work out all the words whose meaning he had surmised. Rasmus Christian Rask (1787-1832), who followed him, found the plural ending in Persian, which had baffled him; and Eugène Burnouf (1801-1852), by the study of a list of Persian geographical names found at Naksh-i-Rustam, discovered at a single stroke almost all the characters of the Persian alphabet, and incidentally confirmed the values already determined by his predecessors.

At the same time as Burnouf, the eminent Sanskrit scholar Professor Christian Lassen (1800-1876), of Bonn, was studying the same list of names; and his results were published at the same time. The controversy which resulted as to priority of discovery may be here passed over while we sum up the results in general conclusions. Lassen may certainly claim in the final court of history that he discovered independently of Burnouf the values of at least six and possibly of eight signs. But in another respect he made very definite progress over Burnouf. He discovered that, if the system of Grotefend were rigidly followed, and to every sign were given the value Grotefend had assigned, some words would be left wholly or almost wholly without vowels; and therefore unpronounceable. As instances of such words he mentioned ÇPRD, THTGUS, KTPTUK, FRAISJM. This situation led Lassen to a very important discovery, towards which his knowledge of the Sanskrit alphabet did much to bring him. He came, in short, to the conclusion that the ancient Persian signs were not entirely alphabetic, but were at least partially syllabic, that is, that certain signs were used to represent not merely an alphabetic character like “b,” but also a syllable such as “ba,” “bi” or “bu.” He claimed that he had successfully demonstrated that the sign for “a” was only used at the beginning of a word, or before a consonant, or before another vowel, and that in every other case it was included in the consonant sign. Thus in the inscription No I. in the second line the signs should be read VA-ZA-RA-KA. This was a most important discovery, and may be said to have revolutionized the study of these long puzzling texts.

During the entire time of this slow process of decipherment, from the first essays of Grotefend in 1802 until the publication of Lassen’s book in 1836, there were more sceptics than believers in the results of the deciphering process. Indeed the history of all forms of decipherment of unknown languages shows that scepticism concerning them is far more prevalent than credulity or even a too ready acceptance. There was need for a man of another people, of different training and a fresh and unbiased mind, to put the capstone upon the decipherment, and he was already at work when Lassen’s important researches appeared.

Major (afterward Sir) Henry Rawlinson had gone out to India, in the service of the East India Company, while still a boy. There he had learned Persian and several of the Indian vernaculars. That was not the sort of training that had prepared Grotefend, Burnouf or Lassen, but it was the kind that the early travellers and copyists had enjoyed. In 1833 young Rawlinson went to Persia, to work with other British officers in the reorganization of the Persian army. While engaged in this service his attention was drawn to the ancient Persian cuneiform inscriptions. In 1835 he copied with great care the texts at Hamadan, and began their decipherment. Of all the eager work which had been going on in Europe he knew little. It is no longer possible to ascertain when he gained his first information of Grotefend’s work, for Norris, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, has left us no record of when he began to send notices of the German’s work. Whenever it was, there seems to be no doubt that Rawlinson worked independently for a time. His method was strikingly like Grotefend’s. He had copied two trilingual inscriptions, and recognized at once that he had three languages before him. In 1839 (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, x. pp. 5, 6) he thus wrote of his method: “When I proceeded ... to compare and interline the two inscriptions (or rather the Persian columns of the two inscriptions, for, as the compartments exhibiting the inscription in the Persian language occupied the principal place in the tablets, and were engraved in the least complicated of the three classes of cuneiform writing, they were naturally first submitted to examination) I found that the characters coincided throughout, except in certain particular groups, and it was only reasonable to suppose that the grounds which were thus brought out and individualized must represent proper names. I further remarked that there were but three of these distinct groups in the two inscriptions; for the group which occupied the second place in one inscription, and which, from its position, suggested the idea of its representing the name of the father of the king who was there commemorated, corresponded with the group which occupied the first place in the other inscription, and thus not only served determinately to connect the two inscriptions together, but, assuming the groups to represent proper names, appeared also to indicate a genealogical succession. The natural inference was that in these three groups of characters I had obtained the proper names belonging to three consecutive generations of the Persian monarchy; and it so happened that the first three names of Hystaspes, Darius and Xerxes, which I applied at hazard to the three groups, according to the succession, proved to answer in all respects satisfactorily and were, in fact, the true identification.”

Rawlinson’s next work was the copying of the great inscription of Darius on the rocks at Behistun (q.v.). He had first seen it in 1835, and as it was high up on the rocky face, and apparently inaccessible, he had studied it by means of a field-glass. He was not able to copy the whole of the Persian text, but in 1837, when he was more skilled in the script, he secured more of it. In the next year he forwarded to the Royal Asiatic Society of London his translation of the first two paragraphs of the Persian text, containing the name, titles and genealogy of Darius. This was little less than a tour de force, for it must be remembered that this had been accomplished without the knowledge of other ancient languages which his European competitors had enjoyed. The translation, received in London on the 14th of March, made a sensation, and a transcript sent in April to the Asiatic Society of Paris secured him an honorary membership in that distinguished body. He was now known, and many made haste to send him copies of everything important which had been published in Europe. The works of Burnouf, Niebuhr, le Brun and Porter came to his hands, and with such assistance he made rapid progress, and in the winter of 1838-1839 his alphabet of ancient Persian was almost complete. In 1839 he was in Bagdad, his work written out and almost ready for publication. But he delayed, hoping for more light, and revising sign by sign with exhaustless patience. He expected to publish his preliminary memoir in the spring of 1840, when he was suddenly sent to Afghanistan as political agent at Kandahar. Here he was too busily engaged in war administration to attend to his favourite studies, which were not renewed until 1843 when he returned to Bagdad. There he received fresh copies and corrections of the Persepolis inscriptions which had been made by Westergaard, and later made a journey to Behistun to perfect his own copies of the texts which had formed the basis of his own first study. At last, after many delays and discouragements, he published, in 1846, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, his memoir, or series of memoirs, on the ancient Persian inscriptions, in which for the first time he gave a nearly complete translation of the Persian text of Behistun. In this one publication Rawlinson attained imperishable fame in Oriental research. His work had been carried on under greater difficulties than those in the path of his European colleagues, but he had surpassed them all in the making of an intelligible and connected translation of a long inscription. He had indeed not done it without assistance from the work of Burnouf, Grotefend and Lassen, but when all allowance is made for these influences his fame is not diminished nor the extent of his services curtailed. His method was adopted before he knew of Lassen’s work. That two men of such different training and of such opposite types of mind should have lighted upon the same method, and by it have attained the same results, confirmed in the eyes of many the truth of the decipherment.

The work of the decipherment of the old Persian texts was now complete for all practical purposes. But in 1846 there appeared a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy by the Rev. Edward Hincks of Killyleagh, County Down, Ireland, whose keen criticisms of Lassen’s work, and original contributions to the definite settlement of syllabic values, may be regarded as closing the period of decipherment of Persian cuneiform writing.

The next problem in the study of cuneiform was the decipherment of the second language in each of the trilingual groups. The first essay in this difficult task was made in 1844 by Niels Louis Westergaard. His method was very similar to that used by Grotefend in the decipherment of Persian. He selected the names of Darius, Hystaspes, Persians and others, and compared them with their equivalents in the Persian texts. By this means he learned a number of signs, and sought by their use in other words to spell out syllables or words whose meanings were then ascertained by conjecture or by comparison. He estimated the number of characters at eighty-two or eighty-seven, and judged the writing to be partly alphabetic and partly syllabic. The language he called Median, and classified it in “the Scythian, rather than in the Japhetic family.” The results of Westergaard were subjected to incisive criticism by Hincks, who made a distinct gain in the problem. It next passed to the hands of de Saulcy, who was able to see further than either. But the matter moved with difficulty because the copied texts were not accurate. By the generosity of Sir Henry Rawlinson his superb copies of the Behistun text, second column, were placed in the hands of Mr Edwin Norris, who was able in 1852 to present a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society deciphering nearly all of it. Mordtmann followed him, naming the language Susian, which was met with general acceptance and was not displaced by the name Amardian, suggested by A. H. Sayce in two papers which otherwise made important contributions to the subject. With his contributions the problem of decipherment of Susian may be considered as closed. The latter workers could only be builders on foundations already laid.

The decipherment of the third of the three languages found at Persepolis and Behistun followed quickly on the success with Susian. The first worker was Isadore Löwenstern, who made out the words for “king” and “great” and the sign for the plural, but little more. The first really great advance was made by Hincks in 1846 and 1847. In these he determined successfully the values of several signs, settled the numerals, and was apparently on the high-road toward the translation of an entire Assyrian text. He was, however, too cautious to proceed so far, and the credit of first translating a short Assyrian text belongs to Longpérier, who in 1847 published the following as the translation of an entire text: “Glorious is Sargon, the great king, the (...) king, king of kings, king of the land of Assyria.” It was nearly all correct, but it advanced our knowledge but slightly because it did not give the forms of the words—because (to put it in another way) he was not able to transliterate the Assyrian words. This was the great problem. In the Persian texts there were but forty-four signs, but in the third column of the Persepolis texts Grotefend had counted one hundred and thirty different characters, and estimated that in all the Babylonian texts known to him there were about three hundred different signs, while Botta discovered six hundred and forty-two in the texts found by him at Khorsabad. That was enough to make the stoutest heart quail, for a meaning must be found for every one of these signs. There could not be so many syllables, and it was, therefore, quite plain that the Babylonian language must have been written in part at least in ideograms. But in 1851 Rawlinson published one hundred and twelve lines of the Babylonian column from Behistun, accompanied by an interlinear transcription into Roman characters, and a translation into Latin. That paper, added to Hinck’s still more acute detail studies, brought to an end the preliminary decipherment of Babylonian. There were still enormous difficulties to be surmounted in the full appreciation of the complicated script, but these would be solved by the combined labours of many workers.

The cuneiform script had its origin in Babylonia and its inventors were a people whom we call the Sumerians. Before the Semitic Babylonians conquered the land it was inhabited by a people of unknown origin variously Origin. classified, by different scholars, with the Ural-altaic or even with the Indo-European family, or as having blood relationship with both. This people is known to us from thousands of cuneiform inscriptions written entirely in their language, though our chief knowledge of them was for a long time derived from Sumerian inscriptions with interlinear translations in Assyrian. Their language is called Sumerian (li-ša-an Su-me-ri) by the Assyrians (Br. Mus. 81-7-27, 130), and its characteristics are being slowly developed by the elaborate study of the immense literature which has come down to us. In 1884 Halévy denied the existence of the Sumerian language, and claimed that it was merely a cabalistic script invented by the priests of the Semites. His early success has not been sustained, and the vast majority of scholars have ceased to doubt the existence of the language.

The Sumerians developed their script from a rude picture-writing, some early forms of which have come down to us. In course of time they used the pictures to represent sounds, apart from ideas. They wrote first on stone, and when clay was adopted soon found that straight lines in soft clay when made by a single pressure of the stylus tend to become wedges, and the pictures therefore lost their character and came to be mere conventional groups of wedges. Some of these wedge-shaped signs are of such character that we are still able to recognize or re-construct the original picture from which they came. The Assyrian sign

, which means heaven, appears in early texts in the form

in which its star-like form is quite evident (star = heaven) and from which the linear form

may be not improbably pre-supposed. A number of other cases were enumerated by the Assyrians themselves (see Cuneiform Texts from Bab. Tab. in Brit. Museum, vol. v., 1898), and there can be no reasonable doubt that this is the origin of the script.

The number of the original picture-signs cannot have been great, but the development of new signs never ceased till the cuneiform script passed wholly from use. The simplest form of development was doubling, to express plurality Development and characteristics. or intensity. After this came the working of two signs into one; thus

“water,” when placed in

“mouth” gave the new sign

“to drink,” and many others. Other signs were formed by the addition of four lines, either vertically or horizontally, to intensify the original meaning. Thus, for instance, the old linear sign

means dwelling, but with four additional signs, thus

, it means “great house.” This sign gradually changed in form until it came to be

. This method of development was called by the Sumerians gunu, and signs thus formed are now commonly called by us, gunu signs. They number hundreds and must be reckoned with in our study of the script development, though perhaps recent scholars have somewhat exaggerated their importance. The process of development is obscure and must always remain so.

The script as finally developed and used by the Assyrians is cumbrous and complicated, and very ill adapted to the sounds of the Semitic alphabet. It has (1) simple syllables, consisting of one vowel and a consonant, or a vowel by itself, thus