VOLUME VII SLICE X David, St to Demidov (continued 2)

DAVOS (Romonsch Tavau, a name variously explained as meaning a sheep pasture or simply “behind”), a mountain valley in the Swiss canton of the Grisons, lying east of Coire (whence it is 40 m. distant by rail), and north-west of the Lower Engadine (accessible at Süs in 18 m. by road). It contains two main villages, 2 m. from each other, Dörfli and Platz (the chief hamlet), which are 5015 ft. above the sea-level, and had a population in 1900 of 8089, a figure exceeded in the Grisons only by the capital Coire. Of the population 5391 were Protestants, 2564 Romanists, and 81 Jews; while 6048 were German-speaking and 486 Romonsch-speaking. In 1860 the population was only 1705, rising to 2002 in 1870, to 2865 in 1880, to 3891 in 1888, and to 8089 in 1890. This steady increase is due to the fact that the valley is now much frequented in winter by consumptive patients, as its position, sheltered from cold winds and exposed to brilliant sunshine in the daytime, has a most beneficial effect on invalids in the first stages of that terrible disease. A local doctor, by name Spengler, first noticed this fact about 1865, and the valley soon became famous. It is now provided with excellent hotels, sanatoria, &c., but as lately as 1860 there was only one inn there, housed in the 16th-century Rathhaus (town hall), which is still adorned by the heads of wolves shot in the neighbourhood. At the north end of the valley is the fine lake of Davos, used for skating in the winter, while from Platz the splendidly engineered Landwasserstrasse leads (20 m.) down to the Alvaneubad station on the Albula railway from Coire to the Engadine.

We first hear of Tavaus or Tavauns in 1160 and 1213, as a mountain pasture or “alp.” It was then in the hands of a Romonsch-speaking population, as is shown by many surviving field names. But, some time between 1260 and 1282, a colony of German-speaking persons from the Upper Valais (first mentioned in 1289) was planted there by its lord, Walter von Vaz, so that it has long been a Teutonic island in the midst of a Romonsch-speaking population. Historically it is associated with the Prättigau or Landquart valley to the north, as it was the most important village of the region, and in 1436 became the capital of the League of the Ten Jurisdictions. (See Grisons.) It formerly contained many iron mines, and belonged from 1477 to 1649 to the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1779 Davos was visited and described by Archdeacon W. Coxe.

(W. A. B. C.)

DAVOUT, LOUIS NICOLAS, duke of Auerstädt and prince of Eckmühl (1770-1823), marshal of France, was born at Annoux (Yonne) on the 10th of May 1770. His name is also, less correctly, spelt Davoût and Davoust. He entered the French army as a sub-lieutenant in 1788, and on the outbreak of the Revolution he embraced its principles. He was chef de bataillon in a volunteer corps in the campaign of 1792, and distinguished himself at Neerwinden in the following spring. He had just been promoted general of brigade when he was removed from the active list as being of noble birth. He served, however, in the campaigns of 1794-1797 on the Rhine, and accompanied Desaix in the Egyptian expedition of Bonaparte. On his return he took part in the campaign of Marengo under Napoleon, who placed the greatest confidence in his abilities, made him a general of division soon after Marengo, and in 1801 gave him a command in the consular guard. At the accession of Napoleon as emperor, Davout was one of the generals who were created marshals of France. As commander of the III. corps of the Grande Armée Davout rendered the greatest services. At Austerlitz, after a forced march of forty-eight hours, the III. corps bore the brunt of the allies’ attack. In the Jena campaign Davout with a single corps fought and won the brilliant victory of Auerstädt against the main Prussian army. (See Napoleonic Campaigns.) He took part, and added to his renown, in the campaign of Eylau and Friedland. Napoleon left him as governor-general in the grand-duchy of Warsaw when the treaty of Tilsit put an end to the war (1807), and in 1808 created him duke of Auerstädt. In the war of 1809 Davout took a brilliant part in the actions which culminated in the victory of Eckmühl, and had an important share in the battle of Wagram (q.v.). He was created prince of Eckmühl about this time. It was Davout who was entrusted by Napoleon with the task of organizing the “corps of observation of the Elbe,” which was in reality the gigantic army with which the emperor invaded Russia in 1812. In this Davout commanded the I. corps, over 70,000 strong, and defeated the Russians at Mohilev before he joined the main army, with which he continued throughout the campaign and the retreat from Moscow. In 1813 he commanded the Hamburg military district, and defended Hamburg, a city ill fortified and provisioned, and full of disaffection, through a long siege, only surrendering the place on the direct order of Louis XVIII. after the fall of Napoleon in 1814.

Davout’s military character was on this, as on many other occasions, interpreted as cruel and rapacious, and he had to defend himself against many attacks upon his conduct at Hamburg. He was a stern disciplinarian, almost the only one of the marshals who exacted rigid and precise obedience from his troops, and consequently his corps was more trustworthy and exact in the performance of its duty than any other. Thus, in the earlier days of the Grande Armée, it was always the III. corps which was entrusted with the most difficult part of the work in hand. The same criterion is to be applied to his conduct of civil affairs. His rapacity was in reality Napoleon’s, for he gave the same undeviating obedience to superior orders which he enforced in his own subordinates. As for his military talents, he was admitted by his contemporaries and by later judgment to be one of the ablest, perhaps the ablest, of all Napoleon’s marshals. On the first restoration he retired into private life, openly displaying his hostility to the Bourbons, and when Napoleon returned from Elba; Davout at once joined him. Appointed minister of war, he reorganized the French army as far as the limited time available permitted, and he was so far indispensable to the war department that Napoleon kept him at Paris during the Waterloo campaign. To what degree his skill and bravery would have altered the fortunes of the campaign of 1815 can only be surmised, but it has been made a ground of criticism against Napoleon that he did not avail himself in the field of the services of the best general he then possessed. Davout directed the gallant, but hopeless, defence of Paris after Waterloo, and was deprived of his marshalate and his titles at the second restoration. When some of his subordinate generals were proscribed, he demanded to be held responsible for their acts, as executed under his orders, and he endeavoured to prevent the condemnation of Ney. After a time the hostility of the Bourbons towards Davout died away, and he was reconciled to the monarchy. In 1817 his rank and titles were restored, and in 1819 he became a member of the chamber of peers. He died at Paris on the 1st of June 1823.

See the marquise de Blocqueville, Le Maréchal Davout raconté par les siens et lui-même (Paris, 1870-1880, 1887); Chenier, Davout, duc d’Auerstädt (Paris, 1866).

DAVY, SIR HUMPHRY, Bart. (1778-1829), English chemist, was born on the 17th of December 1778 at or near Penzance in Cornwall. During his school days at the grammar schools of Penzance and Truro he showed few signs of a taste for scientific pursuits or indeed of any special zeal for knowledge or of ability beyond a certain skill in making verse translations from the classics and in story-telling. But when in 1794 his father, Robert Davy, died, leaving a widow and five children in embarrassed circumstances, he awoke to his responsibilities as the eldest son, and becoming apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary at Penzance set to work on a systematic and remarkably wide course of self-instruction which he mapped out for himself in preparation for a career in medicine. Beginning with metaphysics and ethics and passing on to mathematics, he turned to chemistry at the end of 1797, and within a few months of reading Nicholson’s and Lavoisier’s treatises on that science had produced a new theory of light and heat. About the same time he made the acquaintance of two men of scientific attainments—Gregory Watt (1777-1804), a son of James Watt, and Davies Giddy, afterwards Gilbert (1767-1839), who was president of the Royal Society from 1827 to 1831. By the latter he was recommended to Dr Thomas Beddoes, who was in 1798 establishing his Medical Pneumatic Institution at Bristol for investigating the medicinal properties of various gases. Here Davy, released from his indentures, was installed as superintendent towards the end of 1798. Early next year two papers from his pen were published in Beddoes’ West Country Contributions—one “On Heat, Light and the Combinations of Light, with a new Theory of Respiration and Observations on the Chemistry of Life,” and the other “On the Generation of Phosoxygen (Oxygen gas) and the Causes of the Colours of Organic Beings.” These contain an account of the well-known experiment in which he sought to establish the immateriality of heat by showing its generation through the friction of two pieces of ice in an exhausted vessel, and further attempt to prove that light is “matter of a peculiar kind,” and that oxygen gas, being a compound of this matter with a simple substance, would more properly be termed phosoxygen. Founded on faulty experiments and reasoning, the views he expressed were either ignored or ridiculed; and it was long before he bitterly regretted the temerity with which he had published his hasty generalizations.

One of his first discoveries at the Pneumatic Institution on the 9th of April 1799 was that pure nitrous oxide (laughing gas) is perfectly respirable, and he narrates that on the next day he became “absolutely intoxicated” through breathing sixteen quarts of it for “near seven minutes.” This discovery brought both him and the Pneumatic Institution into prominence. The gas itself was inhaled by Southey and Coleridge among other distinguished people, and promised to become fashionable, while further research yielded Davy material for his Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide, published in 1800, which secured his reputation as a chemist. Soon afterwards, Count Rumford, requiring a lecturer on chemistry for the recently established Royal Institution in London, opened negotiations with him, and on the 16th of February 1801 he was engaged as assistant lecturer in chemistry and director of the laboratory. Ten weeks later, having “given satisfactory proofs of his talents” in a course of lectures on galvanism, he was appointed lecturer, and his promotion to be professor followed on the 31st of May 1802. One of the first tasks imposed on him by the managers was the delivery of a course of lectures on the chemical principles of tanning, and he was given leave of absence for July, August and September 1801 in order to acquaint himself practically with the subject. The main facts he discovered from his experiments in this connexion were described before the Royal Society in 1803. In 1802 the board of agriculture requested him to direct his attention to agricultural subjects; and in 1803, with the acquiescence of the Royal Institution, he gave his first course of lectures on agricultural chemistry and continued them for ten successive years, ultimately publishing their substance as Elements of Agricultural Chemistry in 1813. But his chief interest at the Royal Institution was with electro-chemistry. Galvanic phenomena had already engaged his attention before he left Bristol, but in London he had at his disposal a large battery which gave him much greater opportunities. His first communication to the Royal Society, read in June 1801, related to galvanic combinations formed with single metallic plates and fluids, and showed that an electric cell might be constructed with a single metal and two fluids, provided one of the fluids was capable of oxidizing one surface of the metal; previous piles had consisted of two different metals, or of one plate of metal and the other of charcoal, with an interposed fluid. Five years later he delivered before the Royal Society his first Bakerian lecture, “On some Chemical Agencies of Electricity,” which J. J. Berzelius described as one of the most remarkable memoirs in the history of chemical theory. He summed up his results in the general statement that “hydrogen, the alkaline substances, the metals and certain metallic oxides are attracted by negatively electrified metallic surfaces, and repelled by positively electrified metallic surfaces; and contrariwise, that oxygen and acid substances are attracted by positively electrified metallic surfaces and repelled by negatively electrified metallic surfaces; and these attractive and repulsive forces are sufficiently energetic to destroy or suspend the usual operation of elective affinity.” He also sketched a theory of chemical affinity on the facts he had discovered, and concluded by suggesting that the electric decomposition of neutral salts might in some cases admit of economical applications and lead to the isolation of the true elements of bodies. A year after this paper, which gained him from the French Institute the medal offered by Napoleon for the best experiment made each year on galvanism, he described in his second Bakerian lecture the electrolytic preparation of potassium and sodium, effected in October 1807 by the aid of his battery. According to his cousin, Edmund Davy,1 then his laboratory assistant, he was so delighted with this achievement that he danced about the room in ecstasy. Four days after reading his lecture his health broke down, and severe illness kept him from his professional duties until March 1808. As soon as he was able to work again he attempted to obtain the metals of the alkaline earths by the same methods as he had used for those of the fixed alkalis, but they eluded his efforts and he only succeeded in preparing them as amalgams with mercury, by a process due to Berzelius. His attempts to decompose “alumine, silica, zircone and glucine” were still less fortunate. At the end of 1808 he read his third Bakerian lecture, one of the longest of his papers but not one of the best. In it he disproved the idea advanced by Gay Lussac that potassium was a compound of hydrogen, not an element; but on the other hand he cast doubts on the elementary character of phosphorus, sulphur and carbon, though on this point he afterwards corrected himself. He also described the preparation of boron, for which at first he proposed the name boracium, on the impression that it was a metal. About this time a voluntary subscription among the members of the Royal Institution put him in possession of a new galvanic battery of 2000 double plates, with a surface equal to 128,000 sq. in., to replace the old one, which had become unserviceable. His fourth Bakerian lecture, in November 1809, gave further proofs of the elementary nature of potassium, and described the properties of telluretted hydrogen. Next year, in a paper read in July and in his fifth Bakerian lecture in November, he argued that oxymuriatic acid, contrary to his previous belief, was a simple body, and proposed for it the name “chlorine.”

Davy’s reputation was now at its zenith. As a lecturer he could command an audience of little less than 1000 in the theatre of the Royal Institution, and his fame had spread far outside London. In 1810, at the invitation of the Dublin Society, he gave a course of lectures on electro-chemical science, and in the following year he again lectured in Dublin, on chemistry and geology, receiving large fees at both visits. During his second visit Trinity College conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., the only university distinction he ever received. On the 8th of April 1812 he was knighted by the prince regent; on the 9th he gave his farewell lecture as professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution; and on the 11th he was married to Mrs Apreece, daughter and heiress of Charles Kerr of Kelso, and a distant connexion of Sir Walter Scott. A few months after his marriage he published the first and only volume of his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, with a dedication to his wife, and was also re-elected professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution, though he would not pledge himself to deliver lectures, explaining that he wished to be free from the routine of lecturing in order to have more time for original work. Towards the end of the year he began to investigate chloride of nitrogen, which had just been discovered by P. L. Dulong, but was obliged to suspend his inquiries during the winter on account of injury to his eye caused by an explosion of that substance. In the spring of 1813 he was engaged on the chemistry of fluorine, and though he failed to isolate the element, he reached accurate conclusions regarding its nature and properties. In October he started with his wife for a continental tour, and with them, as “assistant in experiments and writing,” went Michael Faraday, who in the previous March had been engaged as assistant in the Royal Institution laboratory. Having obtained permission from the French emperor to travel in France, he went first to Paris, where during his two months’ stay every honour was accorded him, including election as a corresponding member of the first class of the Institute. He does not, however, seem to have reciprocated the courtesy of his French hosts, but gave offence by the brusqueness of his manner, though his supercilious bearing, according to his biographer, Dr Paris, was to be ascribed less to any conscious superiority than to an “ungraceful timidity which he could never conquer.” Nor was his action in regard to iodine calculated to conciliate. That substance, recently discovered in Paris, was attracting the attention of French chemists when he stepped in and, after a short examination with his portable chemical laboratory, detected its resemblance to chlorine and pronounced it an “undecompounded body.” Towards the end of December he left for Italy. At Genoa he investigated the electricity of the torpedo-fish, and at Florence, by the aid of the great burning-glass in the Accademia del Cimento, he effected the combustion of the diamond in oxygen and decided that, beyond containing a little hydrogen, it consisted of pure carbon. Then he went to Rome and Naples and visited Vesuvius and Pompeii, called on Volta at Milan, spent the summer in Geneva, and returning to Rome occupied the winter with an inquiry into the composition of ancient colours.

A few months after his return, through Germany, to London in 1815, he was induced to take up the question of constructing a miner’s safety lamp. Experiments with samples of fire-damp sent from Newcastle soon taught him that “explosive mixtures of mine-damp will not pass through small apertures or tubes”; and in a paper read before the Royal Society on the 9th of November he showed that metallic tubes, being better conductors of heat, were superior to glass ones, and explained that the heat lost by contact with a large cooling surface brought the temperature of the first portions of gas exploded below that required for the firing of the other portions. Two further papers read in January 1816 explained the employment of wire gauze instead of narrow tubes, and later in the year the safety lamps were brought into use in the mines. A large collection of the different models made by Davy in the course of his inquiries is in the possession of the Royal Institution. He took out no patent for his invention, and in recognition of his disinterestedness the Newcastle coal-owners in September 1817 presented him with a dinner-service of silver plate.2

In 1818, when he was created a baronet, he was commissioned by the British government to examine the papyri of Herculaneum in the Neapolitan museum, and he did not arrive back in England till June 1820. In November of that year the Royal Society, of which he had become a fellow in 1803, and acted as secretary from 1807 to 1812, chose him as their president, but his personal qualities were not such as to make him very successful in that office, especially in comparison with the tact and firmness of his predecessor, Sir Joseph Banks. In 1821 he was busy with electrical experiments and in 1822 with investigations of the fluids contained in the cavities of crystals in rocks. In 1823, when Faraday liquefied chlorine, he read a paper which suggested the application of liquids formed by the condensation of gases as mechanical agents. In the same year the admiralty consulted the Royal Society as to a means of preserving the copper sheathing of ships from corrosion and keeping it smooth, and he suggested that the copper would be preserved if it were rendered negatively electrical, as would be done by fixing “protectors” of zinc to the sheeting. This method was tried on several ships, but it was found that the bottoms became extremely foul from accumulations of seaweed and shellfish. For this reason the admiralty decided against the plan, much to the inventor’s annoyance, especially as orders to remove the protectors already fitted were issued in June 1825, immediately after he had announced to the Royal Society the full success of his remedy.

In 1826 Davy’s health, which showed signs of failure in 1823, had so declined that he could with difficulty indulge in his favourite sports of fishing and shooting, and early in 1827, after a slight attack of paralysis, he was ordered abroad. After a short stay at Ravenna he removed to Salzburg, whence, his illness continuing, he sent in his resignation as president of the Royal Society. In the autumn he returned to England and spent his time in writing his Salmonia or Days of Flyfishing, an imitation of The Compleat Angler. In the spring of 1828 he again left England for Illyria, and in the winter fixed his residence at Rome, whence he sent to the Royal Society his “Remarks on the Electricity of the Torpedo,” written at Trieste in October. This, with the exception of a posthumous work, Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher (1830), was the final production of his pen. On the 20th of February 1829 he suffered a second attack of paralysis which rendered his right side quite powerless, but under the care of his brother, Dr John Davy (1791-1868), he rallied sufficiently to be removed to Geneva, where he died on the 29th of May.

Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. As is shown by his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative; the poet Coleridge declared that if he “had not been the first chemist, he would have been the first poet of his age,” and Southey said that “he had all the elements of a poet; he only wanted the art.” In spite of his ungainly exterior and peculiar manner, his happy gifts of exposition and illustration won him extraordinary popularity as a lecturer, his experiments were ingenious and rapidly performed, and Coleridge went to hear him “to increase his stock of metaphors.” The dominating ambition of his life was to achieve fame, but though that sometimes betrayed him into petty jealousy, it did not leave him insensible to the claims on his knowledge of the “cause of humanity,” to use a phrase often employed by him in connexion with his invention of the miners’ lamp. Of the smaller observances of etiquette he was careless, and his frankness of disposition sometimes exposed him to annoyances which he might have avoided by the exercise of ordinary tact.

See Dr J. A. Paris, The Life of Sir Humphry Davy (1831), vol. ii. of which on pp. 450-456 gives a list of his publications. Dr John Davy, Memoirs of Sir Humphry Davy (1836); Collected Works (with shorter memoir, 1839); Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific (1858). T. E. Thorpe, Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher (1896).

1 Edmund Davy (1785-1857) became professor of chemistry at Cork Institution in 1813, and at the Royal Dublin Society in 1826. His son, Edmund William Davy (born in 1826), was appointed professor of medicine in the Royal College, Dublin, in 1870.

2 Davy’s will directed that this service, after Lady Davy’s death, should pass to his brother, Dr John Davy, on whose decease, if he had no heirs who could make use of it, it was to be melted and sold, the proceeds going to the Royal Society “to found a medal to be given annually for the most important discovery in chemistry anywhere made in Europe or Anglo-America.” The silver produced £736, and the interest on that sum is expended on the Davy medal, which was awarded for the first time in 1877, to Bunsen and Kirchhoff for their discovery of spectrum analysis.

DAWARI, or Dauri, a Pathan tribe on the Waziri border of the North-West Frontier Province of India. The Dawaris inhabit the Tochi Valley (q.v.), otherwise known as Dawar or Daur, and are a homogeneous tribe of considerable size, numbering 5200 fighting men. Though surrounded on all four sides by a Waziri population they bear little resemblance to Waziris. They are an agricultural and the Waziris a pastoral race, and they are much richer than their neighbours. They thrive on a rich sedimentary soil copiously irrigated in the midst of a country where cultivable land of any kind is scarce and water in general hardly to be obtained. But they pay a heavy tax in health and well-being for the possession of their fertile acres. Fevers and other ravaging diseases are bred in the wet sodden lands of the Tochi Valley, lying at the bottom of a deep depression exposed to the burning rays of the sun; and the effects of these ailments may be clearly traced in the drawn or bloated features and the shrunken or swollen limbs of nearly every Dawari that has passed middle life. They have an evil name for indolence, drug-eating and unnatural vices, and are morally the lowest of the Afghan races; but in spite of these defects, and of the contempt with which they are regarded by the other Afghan tribes, they have held their own for centuries against the warlike and hardy Waziris. The secret of this is that the Dawaris stand together, and the Waziris do not, while the weaker race is gifted with infinite patience and tenacity of purpose. With the advent of British government, however, the Dawaris are now secured in the possession of their ancestral lands.

See J. G. Lorimer, Grammar and Vocabulary of Waziri Pushtu (1902).

DAWES, HENRY LAURENS (1816-1903), American lawyer, was born at Cummington, Massachusetts, on the 30th of October 1816. After graduating at Yale in 1839, he taught for a time at Greenfield, Mass., and also edited The Greenfield Gazette. In 1842 he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law at North Adams, where for a time he conducted The Transcript. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1848-1849 and in 1852, in the state Senate in 1850, and in the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1853. From 1853 to 1857 he was United States district attorney for the western district of Massachusetts; and from 1857-1875 he was a Republican member of the national House of Representatives. In 1875 he succeeded Charles Sumner as senator from Massachusetts, serving until 1893. During this long period of legislative activity he served in the House on the committees on elections, ways and means, and appropriations, took a prominent part in the anti-slavery and reconstruction measures during and after the Civil War, in tariff legislation, and in the establishment of a fish commission and the inauguration of daily weather reports. In the Senate he was chairman of the committee on Indian affairs, and gave much attention to the enactment of laws for the benefit of the Indians. On leaving the Senate, in 1893, he became chairman of the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes (sometimes called the Dawes Indian Commission), and served in this capacity for ten years, negotiating with the tribes for the extinction of the communal title to their land and for the dissolution of the tribal governments, with the object of making the tribes a constituent part of the United States.1 Dawes died at Pittsfield, Mass., on the 5th of February 1903.

1 The commission completed its labours on the 1st of July 1905, after having allotted 20,000,000 acres of land among 90,000 Indians and absorbed the five Indian governments into the national system. The “five tribes” were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole Indians.

DAWES, RICHARD (1708-1766), English classical scholar, was born in or near Market Bosworth. He was educated at the town grammar school under Anthony Blackwall, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which society he was elected fellow in 1731. His peculiar habits and outspoken language made him unpopular. His health broke down in consequence of his sedentary life, and it is said that he took to bell-ringing at Great St Mary’s as a restorative. He was a bitter enemy of Bentley, who he declared knew nothing of Greek except from indexes. In 1738 Dawes was appointed to the mastership of the grammar school, Newcastle-on-Tyne, combined with that of St Mary’s hospital. From all accounts his mind appears to have become unhinged; his eccentricities of conduct and continual disputes with his governing body ruined the school, and finally, in 1749, he resigned his post and retired to Heworth, where he chiefly amused himself with boating. He died on the 21st of March 1766. Dawes was not a prolific writer. The book on which his fame rests is his Miscellanea critica (1745), which gained the commendation of such distinguished continental scholars as L. C. Valckenaer and J. J. Reiske. The Miscellanea, which was re-edited by T. Burgess (1781), G. C. Harles (1800) and T. Kidd (1817), for many years enjoyed a high reputation, and although some of the “canons” have been proved untenable and few can be accepted universally, it will always remain an honourable and enduring monument of English scholarship.

See J. Hodgson, An Account of the Life and Writings of Richard Dawes (1828); H. R. Luard in Dict. of Nat. Biog.; J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship, ii. 415.

DAWISON, BOGUMIL (1818-1872), German actor, was born at Warsaw, of Jewish parents, and at the age of nineteen went on the stage. In 1839 he received an appointment to the theatre at Lemberg in Galicia. In 1847 he played at Hamburg with marked success, was from 1849 to 1854 a member of the Burg theatre in Vienna, and then became connected with the Dresden court theatre. In 1864 he was given a life engagement, but resigned his appointment, and after starring through Germany visited the United States in 1866. He died in Dresden on the 1st of February 1872. Dawison was considered in Germany an actor of a new type; a leading critic wrote that he and Marie Seebach “swept like fresh gales over dusty tradition, and brushing aside the monotony of declamation gave to their rôles more character and vivacity than had hitherto been known on the German stage.” His chief parts were Mephistopheles, Franz Moor, Mark Antony, Hamlet, Charles V., Richard III. and King Lear.

DAWKINS, WILLIAM BOYD (1838- ), English geologist and archaeologist, was born at Buttington vicarage near Welshpool, Montgomeryshire, on the 26th of December 1838. Educated at Rossall School and Oxford, he joined the Geological Survey in 1862, and in 1869 became curator of the Manchester museum, a post which he retained till 1890. He was appointed professor of geology and palaeontology in Owens College, Manchester, in 1874. He paid special attention to the question of the existence of coal in Kent, and in 1882 was selected by the Channel tunnel committee to make a special survey of the French and English coasts. He was also employed in the scheme of a tunnel beneath the Humber. His chief distinctions, however, were won in the realms of anthropology by his researches into the lives of the cave-dwellers of prehistoric times, labours which have borne fruit in his books Cave-hunting (1874); Early Man in Britain (1880); British Pleistocene Mammalia (1866-1887). He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1867, and acted as president of the anthropological section of the British Association in 1882 and of the geological section in 1888.

DAWLISH, a watering-place in the Ashburton parliamentary division of Devonshire, England, on the English Channel, near the outflow of the Exe, 12 m. S. of Exeter by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4003. It lies on a cove sheltered by two projecting headlands. A small stream which flows through the town is lined on both sides by pleasure-grounds. Dawlish owes its prosperity to the visitors attracted, in spring and early summer, by the warm climate and excellent bathing. An annual pleasure fair is held on Easter Monday, and a regatta in August or September. Until its sale in the 19th century, the site of Dawlish belonged to Exeter cathedral, having been given to the chapter by Leofric, bishop of Exeter, in 1050.

DAWN (the 16th-century form of the earlier “dawing” or “dawning,” from an old verb “daw,” O. Eng. dagian, to become day; cf. Dutch dagen, and Ger. tagen), the time when light appears (daws) in the sky in the morning. The dawn colours appear in the reverse order of the sunset colours and are due to the same cause. When the sun is lowest in both cases the colour is deep red; this gradually changes through orange to gold and brilliant yellow as the sun approaches the horizon. These colours follow each other in order of refrangibility, reproducing all the colours of the spectrum in order except the blue rays which are scattered in the sky. The colours of the dawn are purer and colder than the sunset colours since there is less dust and moisture in the atmosphere and less consequent sifting of light rays.

DAWSON, GEORGE (1821-1876), English nonconformist divine, was born in London on the 24th of February 1821, and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and at the university of Glasgow. In 1843 he accepted the pastorate of the Baptist church at Rickmansworth, and in 1844 a similar charge at Mount Zion, Birmingham, where he attracted large congregations by his eloquence and his unconventional views. Desiring freedom from any definite creed, he left the Baptist church and became minister of the “Church of the Saviour,” a building erected for him by his supporters. Here he exercised a stimulating and varied ministry for nearly thirty years, gathering round him a congregation of all types and especially of such as found the dogmas of the age distasteful. He had much sympathy with the Unitarian position, but was not himself a Unitarian. Indeed he had no fixed standpoint, and discussed truths and principles from various aspects. His sermons, though not particularly speculative, were unconventional and quickening. He was the friend of Carlyle and Emerson, and did much to popularize their teachings, his influence being conspicuous, especially in his demand for a high ethical standard in everyday life and his insistence on the Christianization of citizenship. He was warmly supported by Dr R. W. Dale, and by J. T. Bunce, editor of The Birmingham Daily Post. Both Dawson and Dale were disqualified as ministers from seats on the town council, but both served on the Birmingham school board. Dawson also lectured on English literature at the Midland Institute and helped to found the Shakespeare Memorial library in Birmingham. He died suddenly at King’s Norton on the 30th of November 1876. Four volumes of Sermons, two of Prayers and two of Biographical Lectures were published after his death.

See Life by H. W. Crosskey (1876) and an article by R. W. Dale in The Nineteenth Century (August 1877).

DAWSON, SIR JOHN WILLIAM (1820-1899), Canadian geologist, was bom at Pictou, Nova Scotia, on the 30th of October 1820. Of Scottish descent, he went to Edinburgh to complete his education, and graduated at the university in 1842, having gained a knowledge of geology and natural history from Robert Jameson. On his return to Nova Scotia in 1842 he accompanied Sir Charles Lyell on his first visit to that territory. Subsequently he was appointed to the post of superintendent of education (1850-1853); at the same time he entered zealously into the geology of the country, making a special study of the fossil forests of the coal-measures. From these strata, in company with Lyell (during his second visit) in 1852, he obtained the first remains of an “air-breathing reptile” named Dendrerpeton. He also described the fossil plants of the Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous rocks of Canada for the Geological Survey of that country (1871-1873). From 1855 to 1893 he was professor of geology and principal of M’Gill University, Montreal, an institution which under his influence attained a high reputation. He was elected F.R.S. in 1862. When the Royal Society of Canada was constituted he was the first to occupy the presidential chair, and he also acted as president of the British Association at its meeting at Birmingham in 1886, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Sir William Dawson’s name is especially associated with the Eozoon canadense, which in 1864 he described as an organism having the structure of a foraminifer. It was found in the Laurentian rocks, regarded as the oldest known geological system. His views on the subject were contested at the time, and have since been disproved, the so-called organism being now regarded as a mineral structure. He was created C.M.G. in 1881, and was knighted in 1884. In his books on geological subjects he maintained a distinctly theological attitude, declining to admit the descent or evolution of man from brute ancestors, and holding that the human species only made its appearance on this earth within quite recent times. Besides many memoirs in the Transactions of learned societies, he published Acadian Geology: The geological structure, organic remains and mineral resources of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island (1855; ed. 3, 1878); Air-breathers of the Coal Period (1863); The Story of the Earth and Man (1873; ed. 6, 1880); The Dawn of Life (1875); Fossil Men and their Modern Representatives (1880); Geological History of Plants (1888); The Canadian Ice Age (1894). He died on the 20th of November 1899.

His son, George Mercer Dawson (1849-1901), was born at Pictou on the 1st of August 1849, and received his education at M‘Gill University and the Royal School of Mines, London, where he had a brilliant career. In 1873 he was appointed geologist and naturalist to the North American boundary commission, and two years later he joined the staff of the geological survey of Canada, of which he became assistant director in 1883, and director in 1895. He was in charge of the Canadian government’s Yukon expedition in 1887, and his name is permanently written in Dawson City, of gold-bearing fame. As one of the Bering Sea Commissioners he spent the summer of 1891 investigating the facts of the seal fisheries on the northern coasts of Asia and America. For his services there, and at the subsequent arbitration in Paris, he was made a C.M.G. He was elected F.R.S. in 1891, and in the same year was awarded the Bigsby medal by the Geological Society of London. He was president of the Royal Society of Canada in 1893. He died on the 2nd of March 1901. He was the author of many scientific papers and reports, especially on the surface geology and glacial phenomena of the northern and western parts of Canada.

DAWSON CITY, or Dawson, the capital of the Yukon territory, Canada, on the right bank of the Yukon river, and in the middle of the Klondyke gold region, of which it is the distributing centre. It is situated in beautiful mountainous country, 1400 ft. above the sea, and 1500 m. from the mouth of the Yukon river. It is reached by a fleet of river steamers, and has telegraphic communication. Founded in 1896, its population soon reached over 20,000 at the height of the gold rush; in 1901 it was officially returned as 9142, and is now not more than 5000. The temperature varies from 90° F. in summer to 50° below zero in winter. It possesses three opera-houses and numerous hotels, and is a typical mining town, though even at first there was much less lawlessness than is usually the case in such cities.

DAX, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Landes, 92 m. S.S.W, of Bordeaux, on the Southern railway between that city and Bayonne. Pop. (1906) 8585. The town lies on the left bank of the Adour, a stone bridge uniting it to its suburb of Le Sablar on the right bank. It has remains of ancient Gallo-Roman fortifications, now converted into a promenade. The most remarkable building in the town is the church of Notre-Dame, once a cathedral; it was rebuilt from 1656 to 1719, but still preserves a sacristy, a porch and a fine sculptured doorway of the 13th century. The church of St Vincent, to the south-west of the town, derives its name from the first bishop, whose tomb it contains. The church of St Paul-lès-Dax, a suburb on the right bank of the Adour, belongs mainly to the 15th century, and has a Romanesque apse adorned with curious bas-reliefs. On a hill to the west of Dax stands a tower built in memory of the sailor and scientist Jean Charles Borda, born there in 1733; a statue was erected to him in the town in 1891. Dax, which is well known as a winter resort, owes much of its importance to its thermal waters and mud-baths (the deposit of the Adour), which are efficacious in cases of rheumatism, neuralgia and other disorders. The best-known spring is the Fontaine Chaude, which issues into a basin 160 ft. wide in the centre of the town. The principal of numerous bathing establishments are the Grands Thermes, the Bains Salés, adjoining a casino, and the Baignots, which fringe the Adour and are surrounded by gardens. Dax has a sub-prefecture, tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a communal college, a training college and a library. It has salt workings, tanneries, saw-mills, manufactures of soap and corks; commerce is chiefly in the pine wood, resin and cork of the Landes, in mules, cattle, horses and poultry.

Dax (Aquae Tarbellicae, Aquae Augustae, later D’Acqs) was the capital of the Tarbelli under the Roman domination, when its waters were already famous. Later it was the seat of a viscounty, which in the 11th century passed to the viscounts of Béarn, and in 1177 was annexed by Richard Cœur de Lion to Gascony. The bishopric, founded in the 3rd century, was in 1801 attached to that of Aire.

DAY, JOHN (1574-1640?), English dramatist, was born at Cawston, Norfolk, in 1574, and educated at Ely. He became a sizar of Caius College, Cambridge, in 1592, but was expelled in the next year for stealing a book. He became one of Henslowe’s playwrights, collaborating with Henry Chettle, William Haughton, Thomas Dekker, Richard Hathway and Wentworth Smith, but his almost incessant activity seems to have left him poor enough, to judge by the small loans, of five shillings and even two shillings, that he obtained from Henslowe. The first play in which Day appears as part-author is The Conquest of Brute, with the finding of the Bath (1598), which, with most of his journeyman’s work, is lost. A drama dealing with the early years of the reign of Henry VI., The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green (acted 1600, printed 1659), written in collaboration with Chettle, is his earliest extant work. It bore the sub-title of The Merry Humor of Tom Strowd, the Norfolk Yeoman, and was so popular that second and third parts, by Day and Haughton, were produced in the next year. The Ile of Guls (printed 1606), a prose comedy founded upon Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, contains in its light dialogue much satire to which the key is now lost, but Mr Swinburne notes in Manasses’s burlesque of a Puritan sermon a curious anticipation of the eloquence of Mr Chadband in Bleak House. In 1607 Day produced, in conjunction with William Rowley and George Wilkins, The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, which detailed the adventures of Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony and Robert Shirley.

The Parliament of Bees is the work on which Day’s reputation chiefly rests. This exquisite and unique drama, or rather masque, is entirely occupied with “the doings, the births, the wars, the wooings” of bees, expressed in a style at once most singular and most charming. The bees hold a parliament under Prorex, the Master Bee, and various complaints are preferred against the humble-bee, the wasp, the drone and other offenders. This satirical allegory of affairs ends with a royal progress of Oberon, who distributes justice to all. The piece contains much for which parallel passages are found in Dekker’s Wonder of a Kingdom (1636) and Samuel Rowley’s (or Dekker’s) Noble Soldier (printed 1634). There is no earlier known edition of The Parliament of Bees than that in 1641, but a persistent tradition has assigned the piece to 1607. In 1608 Day published two comedies, Law Trickes, or Who Would have Thought it? and Humour out of Breath. The date of his death is unknown, but an elegy on him by John Tatham, the city poet, was published in 1640. The six dramas by John Day which we possess show a delicate fancy and dainty inventiveness all his own. He preserved, in a great measure, the dramatic tradition of John Lyly, and affected a kind of subdued euphuism. The Maydes Metamorphosis (1600), once supposed to be a posthumous work of Lyly’s, may be an early work of Day’s. It possesses, at all events, many of his marked characteristics. His prose Peregrinatic Scholastica or Learninges Pilgrimage, dating from his later years, was printed by Mr A. H. Bullen from a MS. of Day’s. Considerations partly based on this work have suggested that he had a share in the anonymous Pilgrimage to Parnassus and the Return from Parnassus. The beauty and ingenuity of The Parliament of Bees were noted and warmly extolled by Charles Lamb; and Day’s work has since found many admirers.

His works, edited by A. H. Bullen, were printed at the Chiswick Press in 1881. The same editor included The Maydes Metamorphosis in vol. i. of his Collection of Old Plays. The Parliament of Bees and Humour out of Breath were printed in Nero and other Plays (Mermaid Series, 1888), with an introduction by Arthur Symons. An appreciation by Mr A. C. Swinburne appeared in The Nineteenth Century (October 1897).

DAY, THOMAS (1748-1789), British author, was born in London on the 22nd of June 1748. He is famous as the writer of Sandford and Merton (1783-1789), a book for the young, which, though quaintly didactic and often ridiculous, has had considerable educational value as inculcating manliness and independence. Day was educated at the Charterhouse and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and became a great admirer of J. J. Rousseau and his doctrine of the ideal state of nature. Having independent means he devoted himself to a life of study and philanthropy. His views on marriage were typical of the man. He brought up two foundlings, one of whom he hoped eventually to marry. They were educated on the severest principles, but neither acquired the high quality of stoicism which he had looked for. After several proposals of marriage to other ladies had been rejected, he married an heiress who agreed with his ascetic programme of life. He finally settled at Ottershaw in Surrey and took to farming on philanthropic principles. He had many curious and impracticable theories, among them one that all animals could be managed by kindness, and while riding an unbroken colt he was thrown near Wargrave and killed on the 28th of September 1789. His poem The Dying Negro, published in 1773, struck the keynote of the anti-slavery movement. It is also obvious from his other works, such as The Devoted Legions (1776) and The Desolation of America (1777), that he strongly sympathized with the Americans during their War of Independence.

DAY (O. Eng. dæg, Ger. Tag; according to the New English Dictionary, “in no way related to the Lat. dies”), in astronomy, the interval of time in which a revolution of the earth on its axis is performed. Days are distinguished as solar, sidereal or lunar, according as the revolution is taken relatively to the sun, the stars or the moon. The solar day is the fundamental unit of time, not only in daily life but in astronomical practice. In the latter case, being determined by observations of the sun, it is taken to begin with the passage of the mean sun over the meridian of the place, or at mean noon, while the civil day begins at midnight. A vigorous effort was made during the last fifteen years of the 19th century to bring the two uses into harmony by beginning the astronomical day at midnight. In some isolated cases this has been done; but the general consensus of astronomers has been against it, the day as used in astronomy being only a measure of time, and having no relation to the period of daily repose. The time when the day shall begin is purely a matter of convenience. The present practice being the dominant one from the time of Ptolemy until the present, it was felt that the confusion in the combination of past and present astronomical observations, and the doubts and difficulties in using the astronomical ephemerides, formed a decisive argument against any change.

The question of a possible variability in the length of the day is one of fundamental importance. One necessary effect of the tidal retardation of the earth’s rotation is gradually to increase this length. It is remarkable that the discussion of ancient eclipses of the moon, and their comparison with modern observations, show only a small and rather doubtful change, amounting perhaps to less than one-hundredth of a second per century. As this amount seems to be markedly less than that which would be expected from the cause in question, it is probable that some other cause tends to accelerate the earth’s rotation and so to shorten the day. The moon’s apparent mean motion in longitude seems also to indicate slow periodic changes in the earth’s rotation; but these are not confirmed by transits of Mercury, which ought also to indicate them. (See Moon and Tides.)

(S. N.)

Legal Aspects.—In law, a day may be either a dies naturalis or natural day, or a dies artificialis or artificial day. A natural day includes all the twenty-four hours from midnight to midnight. Fractions of the day are disregarded to avoid dispute, though sometimes the law will consider fractions, as where it is necessary to show the first of two acts. In cases where action must be taken for preserving or asserting a right, a day would mean the natural day of twenty-four hours, but on the other hand, as in cases of survivorship, for testamentary or other purposes, it would suffice if a person survived for even the smallest portion of the last day necessary.

When a statute directs any act to be done within so many days, these words mean clear days, i.e. a number of perfect intervening days, not counting the terminal days: if the statute says nothing about Sunday, the days mentioned mean consecutive days and include Sundays. Under some statutes (e.g. the Parliamentary Elections Act 1868, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883) Sundays and holidays are excluded in reckoning days, and consequently all the Sundays, &c., of a prescribed sequence of days would be eliminated. So also, by custom, the word “day” may be understood in some special sense. In bills of lading and charter parties, when “days” or “running days” are spoken of without qualification, they usually mean consecutive days, and Sundays and holidays are counted, but when there is some qualification, as where a charter party required a cargo “to be discharged in fourteen days,” “days” will mean working days. Working days, again, vary in different ports, and the custom of the port will decide in each case what are working days. In English charter parties, unless the contrary is expressed, Christmas day and other recognized holidays are included as working days. A weather working day, a term sometimes used in charter parties, means a day when work is not prevented by the weather, and unless so provided for, a day on which work was rendered impossible by bad weather would still be counted as a working day. Lay days, which are days given to the charterer in a charter party either to load or unload without paying for the use of the ship, are days of the week, not periods of twenty-four hours.

Days of Grace.—When a bill of exchange is not payable at sight or on demand, certain days (called days of grace, from being originally a gratuitous favour) are added to the time of payment as fixed by the bill, and the bill is then due and payable on the last day of grace. In the United Kingdom, by the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, three days are allowed as days of grace, but when the last day of grace falls on Sunday, Christmas day, Good Friday or a day appointed by royal proclamation as a public fast or thanksgiving day, the bill is due and payable on the preceding business day. If the last day of grace is a bank holiday (other than Christmas day or Good Friday), or when the last day of grace is a Sunday, and the second day of grace is a bank holiday, the bill is due and payable on the succeeding business day. Days of grace (dies non) are in existence practically among English-speaking peoples only. They were abolished by the French Code (Code de Commerce, Liv. i. tit. 8, art. 135), and by most, if not all, of the European codes since framed.

Civil Days.—An artificial or civil day is, to a certain extent, difficult to define; it “may be regarded as a convenient term to signify all the various kinds of ‘day’ known in legal proceedings other than the natural day.” (Ency. English Law, tit. “Day”). The Jews, Chaldeans and Babylonians began the day at the rising of the sun; the Athenians at the fall; the Umbri in Italy began at midday; the Egyptians and Romans at midnight; and in England, the United States and most of the countries of Europe the Roman civil day still prevails, the day usually commencing as soon as the clock begins to strike 12 P.M. of the preceding day.

In England the period of the civil day may also vary under different statutes. In criminal law the day formerly commenced at sunrise and extended to sunset, but by the Larceny Act 1861 the day is that period between six in the morning and nine in the evening. The same period of time comprises a day under the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1885 and the Public Health (London) Act 1891, but under the Public Health (Scotland) Act 1897 “day” is the period between 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. By an act of 1845, regulating the labour of children in print-works, “day” is defined as from 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. Daytime, within which distress for rent must be made, is from sunrise to sunset (Tulton v. Darke, 1860, 2 L.T. 361). An obligation to pay money on a certain day is theoretically discharged if the money is paid before midnight of the day on which it falls due, but custom has so far modified this that the law requires reasonable hours to be observed. If, for instance, payment has to be made at a bank or place of business, it must be within business hours.

When an act of parliament is expressed to come into operation on a certain day, it is to be construed as coming into operation on the expiration of the previous day (Interpretation Act 1889, § 36; Statutes [Definition of Time] Act 1880).

Under the orders of the supreme court the word “day” has two meanings. For purposes of personal service of writs, it means any time of the day or night on week-days, but excludes the time from twelve midnight on Saturday till twelve midnight on Sunday. For purposes of service not required to be personal, it means before six o’clock on any week-day except Saturday, and before 2 P.M. on Saturday.

Closed Days, i.e. Sunday, Christmas day and Good Friday, are excluded from all fixtures of time less than six days: otherwise they are included, unless the last day of the time fixed falls on one of those days (R.S.C., O. lxiv.).

American Practice.—In the United States a day is the space of time between midnight and midnight. The law pays no regard to fractions of a day except to prevent injustice. A “day’s work” is by statute in New York fixed at eight hours for all employees except farm and domestic servants, and for employees on railroads at ten hours (Laws 1897, ch. 415). In the recording acts relating to real property, fractions of a day are of the utmost importance, and all deeds, mortgages and other instruments affecting the property, take precedence in the order in which they were filed for record. Days of grace are abolished in many of the seventeen states in which the Negotiable Instruments law has been enacted. Sundays and public holidays are usually excluded in computing time if they are the last day within which the act was to be done. General public holidays throughout the United States are Christmas, Thanksgiving (last Thursday in November) and Independence (July 4th) days and Washington’s birthday (February 22nd). The several states have also certain local public holidays. (See also Month; Time.)

(T. A. I.)

DAYLESFORD, a town of Talbot county, Victoria, Australia, 74 m. by rail N.W. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 3384. It lies on the flank of the Great Dividing Range, at an elevation of 2030 ft. On Wombat Hill are beautiful public gardens commanding extensive views, and a fine convent of the Presentation Order. Much wheat is grown in the district, and gold-mining, both quartz and alluvial, is carried on. Daylesford has an important mining school. Near the town are the Hepburn mineral springs and a number of beautiful waterfalls, and 6 m. from it is Mount Franklin, an extinct volcano.

DAYTON, a city of Campbell county, Kentucky, U.S.A., on the S. bank of the Ohio river, opposite Cincinnati, and adjoining Bellevue and Newport, Ky. Pop. (1890) 4264; (1900) 6104 including 655 foreign-born and 63 negroes; (1910) 6979. It is served by the Chesapeake & Ohio railway at Newport, of which it is a suburb, largely residential. It has manufactories of watch-cases and pianos, and whisky distilleries. In the city is the Speers Memorial hospital. Dayton was settled and incorporated in 1849.

DAYTON, a city and the county-seat of Montgomery county, Ohio, U.S.A., at the confluence of Wolf Creek, Stillwater river and Mad river with the Great Miami, 57 m. N.N.E. of Cincinnati and about 70 m. W.S.W. of Columbus. Pop. (1890) 61,220; (1900) 85,333; (1910) 116,577. In 1900 there were 10,053 foreign-born and 3387 negroes; of the foreign-born 6820 were Germans and 1253 Irish. Dayton is served by the Erie, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, and the Dayton & Union railways, by ten interurban electric railways, centring here, and by the Miami & Erie Canal. The city extends more than 5 m. from E. to W., and 3½ m. from N. to S., lies for the most part on level ground at an elevation of about 740 ft. above sea-level, and numerous good, hard gravel roads radiate from it in all directions through the surrounding country, a fertile farming region which abounds in limestone, used in the construction of public and private buildings. Among the more prominent buildings are the court-house—the portion first erected being designed after the Parthenon—the Steele high school, St Mary’s college, Notre Dame academy, the Memorial Building, the Arcade Building, Reibold Building, the Algonquin Hotel, the post office, the public library (containing about 75,000 volumes), the Young Men’s Christian Association building and several churches. At Dayton are the Union Biblical seminary, a theological school of the United Brethren in Christ, and the publishing house of the same denomination. By an agreement made in 1907 the school of theology of Ursinus College (Collegeville, Pennsylvania; the theological school since 1898 had been in Philadelphia) and the Heidelberg Theological seminary (Tiffin, Ohio) united to form the Central Theological seminary of the German Reformed Church, which was established in Dayton in 1908. The boulevard and park along the river add attractiveness to the city. Among the charitable institutions are the Dayton state hospital (for the insane), the Miami Valley and the St Elizabeth hospitals, the Christian Deaconess, the Widows’ and the Children’s homes, and the Door of Hope (for homeless girls); and 1 m. W. of the city is the central branch of the National Home for disabled volunteer soldiers, with its beautifully ornamented grounds, about 1 sq. m. in extent. The Mad river is made to furnish good water-power by means of a hydraulic canal which takes its water through the city, and Dayton’s manufactures are extensive and varied, the establishments of the National Cash Register Company employing in 1907 about 4000 wage-earners. This company is widely known for its “welfare work” on behalf of its operatives. Baths, lunch-rooms, rest-rooms, clubs, lectures, schools and kindergartens have been supplied, and the company has also cultivated domestic pride by offering prizes for the best-kept gardens, &c. From April to July 1901 there was a strike in the already thoroughly unionized factories; complaint was made of the hectoring of union men by a certain foreman, the use in toilet-rooms of towels laundered in non-union shops (the company replied by allowing the men to supply towels themselves), the use on doors of springs not union-made (these were removed by the company), and especially the discharge of four men whom the company refused to reinstate. The company was victorious in the strike, and the factory became an “open shop.” In addition to cash registers, the city’s manufactured products include agricultural implements, clay-working machinery, cotton-seed and linseed oil machinery, filters, turbines, railway cars (the large Barney-Smith car works employed 1800 men in 1905), carriages and wagons, sewing-machines (the Davis Sewing Machine Co.), automobiles, clothing, flour, malt liquors, paper, furniture, tobacco and soap. The total value of the manufactured product, under the “factory system,” was $31,015,293 in 1900 and $39,596,773 in 1905. Dayton’s site was purchased in 1795 from John Cleves Symmes by a party of Revolutionary soldiers, and it was laid out as a town in 1796 by Israel Ludlow (one of the owners), by whom it was named in honour of Jonathan Dayton (1760-1824), a soldier in the War of Independence, a member of Congress from New Jersey in 1791-1799, and a United States senator in 1799-1805. It was made the county-seat in 1803, was incorporated as a town in 1805, grew rapidly after the opening of the canal in 1828, and in 1841 was chartered as a city.

DEACON (Gr. διάκονος, minister, servant), the name given to a particular minister or officer of the Christian Church. The status and functions of the office have varied in different ages and in different branches of Christendom.

(a) The Ancient Church.—The office of deacon is almost as old as Christianity itself, though it is impossible to fix the moment at which it came into existence. Tradition connects its origin with the appointment of “the Seven” recorded in Acts vi. This connexion, however, is questioned by a large and increasing number of modern scholars, on the ground that “the Seven” are not called deacons in the New Testament and do not seem to have been identified with them till the time of Irenaeus (A.D. 180). The first definite reference to the diaconate occurs in St Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (i. 1), where the officers of the Church are described as “bishops and deacons”—though it is not unlikely that earlier allusions are to be found in 1 Cor. xii. 28 and Romans xii. 7. In the pastoral epistles the office seems to have become a permanent institution of the Church, and special qualifications are laid down for those who hold it (1 Tim. iii. 8). By the time of Ignatius (A.D. 110) the “three orders” of the ministry were definitely established, the deacon being the lowest of the three and subordinate to the bishop and the presbyters. The inclusion of deacons in the “three orders” which were regarded as essential to the existence of a true Church sharply distinguished them from the lower ranks of the ministry, and gave them a status and position of importance in the ancient Church.

The functions attaching to the office varied at different times. In the apostolic age the duties of deacons were naturally vague and undefined. They were “helpers” or “servants” of the Church in a general way and served in any capacity that was required of them. With the growth of the episcopate, however, the deacons became the immediate ministers of the bishop. Their duties included the supervision of Church property, the management of Church finances, the visitation of the sick, the distribution of alms and the care of widows and orphans. They were also required to watch over the souls of the flock and report to the bishop the cases of those who had sinned or were in need of spiritual help. “You deacons,” says the Apostolical Constitutions (4th century), “ought to keep watch over all who need watching or are in distress, and let the bishop know.” With the growth of hospitals and other charitable institutions, however, the functions of deacons became considerably curtailed. The social work of the Church was transferred to others, and little by little the deacons sank in importance until at last they came to be regarded merely as subordinate officers of public worship, a position which they hold in the Roman Church to-day, where their duties are confined to such acts as the following:—censing the officiating priest and the choir, laying the corporal on the altar, handing the paten or cup to the priest, receiving from him the pyx and giving it to the subdeacon, putting the mitre on the archbishop’s head (when he is present) and laying his pall upon the altar.

(b) The Church of England.—The traditionary position of the diaconate as one of the “three orders” is here maintained. Deacons may conduct any of the ordinary services in the church, but are not permitted to pronounce the absolution or consecrate the elements for the Eucharist. In practice the office has become a stepping-stone to the priesthood, the deacon corresponding to the licentiate in the Presbyterian Church. Candidates for the office must have attained the age of twenty-three and must satisfy the bishop with regard to their intellectual, moral and spiritual fitness. The functions of the office are defined in the Ordinal—“to assist the priest in divine service and specially when he ministereth the Holy Communion, to read Holy Scriptures and Homilies in the church, to instruct the youth in the catechism, to baptize in the absence of the priest, to preach if he be admitted thereto by the bishop, and furthermore to search for the sick, poor and impotent people and intimate their estates and names to the curate.”

(c) Churches of the Congregational Order.—In these (which of course include Baptists) the diaconate is a body of laymen appointed by the members of the church to act as a management committee and to assist the minister in the work of the church. There is no general rule as to the number of deacons, though the traditionary number of seven is often kept, nor as to the frequency of election, each church making its own arrangements in this respect. The deacons superintend the financial affairs of the church, co-operate with the minister in the various branches of his work, assist in the visitation of the sick, attend to the church property and generally supervise the activities of the church.

See Thomassinus, Vetus ac nova disciplina, pars i. lib. i. c. 51 f. and lib. ii. c. 29 f. (Lugdunum, 1706); J. N. Seidl, Der Diakonat in der katholischen Kirche (Regensburg, 1884); R. Sohm, Kirchenrecht, i. 121-137 (Leipzig, 1892); F. J. A. Hort, The Christian Ecclesia (London, 1897).

DEACONESS (ἡ διάκονος or διακόνισσα, servant, minister), the name given to a woman set apart for special service in the Christian Church. The origin and early history of the office are veiled in obscurity. It is quite certain that from the 3rd century onward there existed in the Eastern Church an order of women, known as deaconesses, who filled a position analogous to that of deacons. They are quite distinct from the somewhat similar orders of “virgins” and “widows,” who belonged to a lower plane in the ecclesiastical system. The order is recognized in the canons of the councils of Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451), and is frequently mentioned in the writings of Chrysostom (some of whose letters are addressed to deaconesses at Constantinople), Epiphanius, Basil, and indeed most of the more important Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries. Deaconesses, upon entering their office, were ordained much in the same way as deacons, but the ordination conveyed no sacerdotal powers or authority. Epiphanius says quite distinctly that they were woman-elders and not priestesses in any sense of the term, and that their mission was not to interfere with the functions allotted to priests but simply to perform certain offices in connexion with the care of women. Several specimens of the ordination service for deaconesses have been preserved (see Cecilia Robinson, The Ministry of Deaconesses, London, 1878, appendix B, p. 197). The functions of the deaconess were as follows: (1) To assist at the baptism of women, especially in connexion with the anointing of the body which in the ancient Church always preceded immersion; (2) to visit the women of the Church in their homes and to minister to the needs of the sick and afflicted; (3) according to the Apostolical Constitutions they acted as door-keepers in the church, received women as they entered and conducted them to their allotted seats. In the Western Church, on the other hand, we hear nothing of the order till the 4th century, when an attempt seems to have been made to introduce it into Gaul. Much opposition, however, was encountered, and the movement was condemned by the council of Orange in 441 and the council of Epaone in 517. In spite of the prohibition the institution made some headway, and traces of it are found later in Italy, but it never became as popular in the West as it was in the East. In the middle ages the order fell into abeyance in both divisions of the Church, the abbess taking the place of the deaconess. Whether deaconesses, in the later sense of the term, existed before 250 is a disputed point. The evidence is scanty and by no means decisive. There are only three passages which bear upon the question at all. (i) Romans xvi. 1: Phoebe is called ἡ διάκονος, but it is quite uncertain whether the word is used in its technical sense. (ii) 1 Tim. iii. 11: after stating the qualifications necessary for deacons the writer adds, “Women in like manner must be grave—not slanderers,” &c.; the Authorized Version took the passage as referring to deacons’ wives, but many scholars think that by “women” deaconesses are meant. (iii) In Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan respecting the Christians of Bithynia mention is made of two Christian maidservants “quae ministrae dicebantur”; whether ministrae is equivalent to διάκονοι, as is often supposed, is dubious. On the whole the evidence does not seem sufficient to prove the contention that an order of deaconesses—in the ecclesiastical sense of the term—existed from the apostolic age.

In modern times several attempts have been made to revive the order of deaconesses. In 1833 Pastor Fleidner founded “an order of deaconesses for the Rhenish provinces of Westphalia” at Kaiserswerth. The original aim of the institution was to train nurses for hospital work, but its scope was afterwards extended and it trained its members for teaching and parish work as well. Kaiserswerth became the parent of many similar institutions in different parts of the continent. A few years later, in 1847, Miss Sellon formed for the first time a sisterhood at Devonport in connexion with the Church of England. Her example was gradually followed in other parts of the country, and in 1898 there were over two thousand women living together in different sisterhoods. The members of these institutions do not represent the ecclesiastical deaconesses, however, since they are not ministers set apart by the Church; and the sisterhoods are merely voluntary associations of women banded together for spiritual fellowship and common service. In 1861 Bishop Tait set apart Miss Elizabeth Ferard as a deaconess by the laying on of hands, and she became the first president of the London Deaconess Institution. Other dioceses gradually adopted the innovation. It has received the sanction of Convocation, and the Lambeth Conference in 1897 declared that it “recognized with thankfulness the revival of the office of deaconess,” though at the same time it protested against the indiscriminate use of the title and laid it down emphatically that the name must be restricted to those who had been definitely set apart by the bishop for the position and were working under the direct supervision and control of the ecclesiastical authority in the parish.

In addition to Miss Robinson’s book cited above, see Church Quarterly Review, xlvii. 302 ff., art. “On the Early History and Modern Revival of Deaconesses” (London, 1899), and the works there referred to; D. Latas, Χριστιανικὴ Ἀρχαιολογία, i. 163-171 (Athens, 1883); Testamentum Domini, ed. Rahmani (Mainz, 1899); L. Zscharnack, Der Dienst der Frau in den ersten Jahrhunderten der chr. Kirche (1902).

DEAD SEA, a lake in Palestine occupying the deepest part of the valley running along the line of a great “fault” that has been traced from the Gulf of Akaba (at the head of the Red Sea) to Hermon. This fracture was caused after the end of the Eocene period by the earth-movement which resulted in the raising of the whole region out of the sea. Level for level, the more ancient rocks are on the eastward side of the lake: the cretaceous limestones that surmount the older volcanic substrata come down on the western side to the water’s edge, while on the eastern side they are raised between 3000 and 4000 feet above it. In the Pleistocene period the whole of this depression was filled with water forming a lake about 200 m. long north to south, whose waters were about the same level as that of the Mediterranean Sea. With the diminishing rainfall and increased temperature that followed that period the effects of evaporation gradually surpassed the precipitation, and the waters of the lake slowly diminished to about the extent which they still display.

The length of the sea is 47 m., and its maximum breadth is about 9½ m.; its area is about 340 sq. m. It lies nearly north and south. Its surface being 1289-1300 ft. below the level of the Mediterranean Sea, it has of course no outlet. It is bounded on the north by the broad valley of the Jordan; on the east by the rapidly rising terraces which culminate in the Moabite plateau, 3100 ft. above the level of the lake; on the south by the desert of the Arabah, which rises to the watershed between the Dead and the Red Sea—65½ m. from the former, 46½ from the latter; height 660 ft.—and on the west by the Judean mountains which attain a height of 3300 ft. On the east side a peninsula, El-Lisān (“the tongue”), of white calcareous marl with beds of salt and gypsum, divides the sea into two unequal parts: this peninsula is about 50 ft. high, and is connected by a narrow strip of marshland with the shore. Its northern and southern extremities have been named Cape Costigan and Cape Molyneux, in memory of two explorers who were among the first in modern times to navigate the sea and succumbed to the consequent fever and exhaustion. North of the peninsula the lake has a maximum depth of 1278 ft.; south of it the water is nowhere more than 12 ft., and in some places only 3 ft. The surface level of the lake varies with the season, and recent observations taken on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund seem to show that there are probably cyclical variations also (ultimately dependent on the rainfall), the nature and periodicity of which there are as yet no sufficient data to determine. In 1858 there was a small island near the north end rising 10 or 12 ft. above the surface and connected with the shore by a causeway; this has been submerged since 1892; and owing to the gradual rise of level within these years the fords south of the Lisān, and the pathway which formerly rounded the Ras Feshkhah, are now no longer passable.

The slopes on each side of the sea are furrowed with watercourses, some of them perennial, others winter torrents only. The chief affluents of the sea are as follows:—on the north, Jordan and ‘Ain es-Suweimeh; on the east Wadis Ghuweir, Zerka Ma’in (Callirrhoë), Mōjib (Arnon), Ed-Dera’a, and el-Hesi; on the west, Wadis Muhawāt and Seyāl, ‘Ain Jidi (En-Gedi), Wadi el Merabbah, ‘Ain Ghuweir, Wadi el-Nar, ‘Ain Feshkhah. The quantity of water poured daily into the sea is not less than 6,000,000 tons, all of which has to be carried off by evaporation. The consequence of the ancient evaporation, by which the great Pleistocene lake was reduced to its present modest dimensions, and of the ceaseless modern daily evaporation, is the impregnation of the waters of the lake with salts and other mineral substances to a remarkable degree. Ocean water contains on an average 4-6% of salts: Dead Sea water contains 25%. The following analysis, by Dr Bernays, gives the contents of the water more accurately:—

Specific gravity 1.1528 at 15.5° C.

Calcium carbonate 70.00 grains

Calcium sulphate 163.39

Magnesium nitrate 175.01

Potassium chloride 1089.06

Sodium chloride 5106.00

Calcium chloride 594.46

Magnesium chloride 7388.21

Magnesium bromide 345.80

Iron and aluminium oxides 10.50

Organic matter, water of crystallization, loss 317.57

————

Total residue per gallon 15260.00

The density of the water averages 1.166. It increases from north to south, and with the depth. The increase is at first rapid, then, after reaching a certain point, becomes more uniform. At 300 metres its density is 1.253. The boiling point is 221° F. To the quantity of solid matter suspended in its water the Dead Sea owes, beside its saltness, its buoyancy and its poisonous properties. The human body floats on the surface without exertion. Owing principally to the large proportion of chloride and bromide of magnesia no animal life can exist in its water. Fish, which abound in the Jordan and in the brackish spring-fed lagoons that exist in one or two places around its shores (such as ‘Ain Feshkhah), die in a very short time if introduced into the main waters of the lake. The only animal life reported from the lake has been some tetanus and other bacilli said to have been found in its mud; but this discovery has not been confirmed. To the chloride of calcium is due the smooth and oily feeling of the water, and to the chloride of magnesia its disagreeable taste. In Roman times curative properties were ascribed to the waters: Mukaddasi (A.D. 985) asserts that people assembled to drink it on a feast day in August. The salt of the Dead Sea is collected and sold in Jerusalem; smuggling of salt (which in Turkey is a government monopoly) is a regular occupation of the Bedouin. The bitumen which floats to shore is also collected. The origin of this bitumen is disputed: it was supposed to be derived from subaqueous strata of bituminous marl and rose to the surface when loosened by earthquakes. It is, however, now more generally believed that it exists in the breccia of some of the valleys on the west side of the lake, which is washed into the sea and submerged, till the small stones by which it is sunk are loosened and fall out, when the bitumen rises to the surface.

History.—The earliest references to the sea or its basin are in the patriarchal narratives of Lot and Abraham, the most striking being the destruction of the neighbouring cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. (See Sodom.) The biblical name is the Salt Sea, the Sea of the Arabah (the south end of the Jordan valley), or the East Sea. The name in Josephus is Asphaltites, referring to the bituminous deposits above alluded to. The modern name is Bahr Lūt or “Sea of Lot”—a name hardly to be explained as a survival of a vague tradition of the patriarch, but more probably due to the literary influences of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Koran filtering through to the modern inhabitants or their ancestors. The name Dead Sea first appears in late Greek writers, as Pausanias and Galen. At En-Gedi on its western bank David for a while took refuge. South of it is the stronghold of Masada, built by Jonathan Maccabaeus and fortified by Herod in 42 B.C., where the last stand of the Jews was made against the Romans after the fall of Jerusalem, and where the garrison, when the defences were breached, slew themselves rather than fall into Roman hands.

The sea has been but little navigated. Tacitus and Josephus mention boats on the lake, and boats are shown upon it in the Madeba mosaic. The navigation dues formed part of the revenue of the lords of Kerak under the crusaders. In modern times navigation is practically nil. The lake, with the whole Jericho plain, is claimed as the personal property of the sultan.

The medieval travellers brought home many strange legends of the sea and its peculiarities—some absurd, others with a basis of fact. The absence of sea-birds, due to the absence of fish, probably accounts for the story that no birds could fly over it. The absence of vegetation on its shores, due to the scanty rainfall and general want of fresh water—except in the neighbourhood of springs like ‘Ain Feshkhah and ‘Ain Jidi, where a luxuriant subtropical vegetation is found—accounts for the story that no plant could live in the poisonous air which broods over the sea. The mists, due to the great heat and excessive evaporation, and the noxious miasmata, especially of the southern region, were exaggerated into the noisome vapours that the “black and stinking” waters ever exhaled. The judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (which of course they believed to be under the waters of the lake, in accordance with the absurd theory first found in Josephus and still often repeated) blinded these good pilgrims to the ever-fresh beauty of this most lovely lake, whose blue and sparkling waters lie deep between rocks and precipices of unsurpassable grandeur. The play of brilliant colours and of ever-changing contrasts of light and shade on those rugged mountain-sides and on the surface of the sea itself might have been expected to appeal to the most prosaic. The surface of the sea is generally smooth (seldom, however, absolutely inert as the pilgrims represented it), but is frequently raised by the north winds into waves, which, owing to the weight and density of the water, are often of great force.

The first to navigate the sea in modern times was an Irish traveller, Costigan by name, in August and September 1835. Owing largely to the folly of his Greek servant, who, without his master’s knowledge, threw overboard the drinking-water to lighten the boat, the explorer after circumnavigating the sea reached Jericho in an exhausted condition, and was there attacked by a severe fever. The greatest difficulty was experienced in obtaining assistance for him, but he was ultimately conveyed on camel-back to Jerusalem, where he died; his grave is in the Franciscan cemetery there. His fate was shared by his successor, a British naval officer, Lieutenant Molyneux (1847), whose party was attacked and robbed by Bedouins. W. F. Lynch, an American explorer (1848), equipped by the United States government, was more successful, and he may claim to be the first who examined its shores and sounded its depths. Since his time the duc de Luynes, Lartet, Wilson, Hull, Blanckenhorn, Gautier, Libbey, Masterman and Schmidt, to name but a few, have made contributions to our knowledge of this lake; but still many problems present themselves for solution. Among these may be mentioned (1) the explanation of a remarkable line of white foam that extends along the axis of the lake almost every morning—supposed by Blanckenhorn to mark the line of a fissure, thermal and asphaltic, under the bed of the lake, but otherwise explained as a consequence of the current of the Jordan, which is not completely expended till it reaches the Lisān, or as a result of the mingling of the salt water with the brackish spring water especially along the western shore; (2) a northward current that has been observed along the east coast; (3) various disturbances of level, due possibly to differences of barometric pressure; (4) some apparently electrical phenomena that have been observed in the valley. Before we can be said to know all that we might regarding this most interesting of lakes further extensive scientific observations are necessary; but these are extremely difficult owing to the impossibility of maintaining self-registering instruments in a region practically closed to Europeans for nearly half the year by the stifling heat, and inhabited only by Bedouins, who are the worst kind of ignorant, thievish and mischievous savages.

(R. A. S. M.)

DEADWOOD, a city and the county-seat of Lawrence county, South Dakota, U.S.A., about 180 m. W. of Pierre. Pop. (1890) 2366; (1900) 3498, of whom 707 were foreign-born; (1905) 4364; (1910) 3653. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and the Chicago & North-Western railways. It lies on hilly ground in the canyon of Whitewood Creek at an elevation of about 4530 ft. Deadwood is the commercial centre of the Black Hills. About it are several gold mines (including the well-known Home-stake mine), characterized by the low grade of their ores (which range from $2 to $8 per ton), by their vast quantity, and by the ease of mining and of extracting the metal. The ore contains free gold, which is extracted by the simple process of stamping and amalgamation, and refractory values, extracted by the cyaniding process. Several hundred tons of ore are treated thus in Deadwood and its environs daily, and its stamp mills are exceeded in size only by those of the Treadwell mine in S.E. Alaska, and by those on the Rand in South Africa. The discovery of gold here was made known in June 1875, and in February 1877 the United States government, after having purchased the land from the Sioux Indians, opened the place for legal settlement.

DEAF AND DUMB.1 The term “deaf” is frequently applied to those who are deficient in hearing power in any degree, however slight, as well as to people who are unable to detect the loudest sounds by means of the auditory organs. It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between the deaf and the hearing at any particular point. For the purposes of this article, however, that denotation which is generally accepted by educators of the deaf may be given to the term. This makes it refer to those who are so far handicapped as to be incapable of instruction by the ordinary means of the ear in a class of those possessing normal hearing. Paradoxical though it may seem, it is yet true to say that “dumbness” in our sense of the word does not, strictly speaking, exist, though the term “dumb” may, for all practical purposes, fairly be applied to many of the deaf even after they are supposed to have learnt how to speak. Oral teachers now confess that it is not worth while to try to teach more than a large percentage of the deaf to speak at all. We are not concerned with aphasia, stammering or such inability to articulate as may be due to malformation of the vocal organs. In the case of the deaf and dumb, as these words are generally understood, dumbness is merely the result of ignorance in the use of the voice, this ignorance being due to the deafness. The vocal organs are perfect. The deaf man can laugh, shout, and in fact utter any and every sound that the normal person can. But he does not speak English (if that happens to be his nationality) for the same reason that a French child does not, which is that he has never heard it. There is in fact no more a priori reason why an English baby, born in England, should talk English than that it should talk any other language. English may be correctly described as its “mother tongue,” but not its natural language; the only reason why one person speaks English and another Russian is that each imitated that particular language which he heard in infancy. This imitation depends upon the ability to hear. Hence if one has never heard, or has lost hearing in early childhood, he has never been able to imitate that language which his parents and others used, and the condition of so-called dumbness is added to his deafness. From this it follows that if the sense of hearing be not lost till the child has learnt to speak fluently, the ability to speak is unaffected by the calamity of deafness, except that after many years the voice is likely to become high-pitched, or too guttural, or peculiar in some other respect, owing to the absence of the control usually exercised by the ear. It also follows that, to a certain extent, the art of speech can be taught the deaf person even though he were born deaf. Theoretically, he is capable of talking just as well as his hearing brother, for the organs of speech are as perfect in one as in the other, except that they suffer from lack of exercise in the case of the deaf man. Practically, he can never speak perfectly, for even if he were made to attempt articulation as soon as he is discovered to be deaf, the fact that the ear, the natural guide of the voice, is useless, lays upon him a handicap which can never be wiped out. He can never hear the tone of his teacher’s voice nor of his own; he can only see small and, in many instances, scarcely discernible movements of the lips, tongue, nose, cheeks and throat in those who are endeavouring to teach him to speak, and he can never hope to succeed in speech through the instrumentality of such unsatisfactory appeals to his eye as perfectly as the hearing child can with the ideal adaptation of the voice to the ear. Sound appeals to the ear, not the eye, and those who have to rely upon the latter to imitate speech must suffer by comparison.

Deafness then, in our sense, means the incapacity to be instructed by means of the ear in the normal way, and dumbness means only that ignorance of how to speak one’s mother tongue which is the effect of the deafness.

Of such deaf people many can hear sound to some extent. Dr Kerr Love quotes several authorities (Deaf Mutism, pp. 58 ff.) to show that 50 or 60% are absolutely deaf, while 25% can detect loud sounds such as shouting close to the ear, and the rest can distinguish vowels or even words. He himself thinks that not more than 15 or 20% are totally deaf—sometimes only 7 or 8%; that ability to hear speech exists in about one in four, while ten or fifteen in each hundred are only semi-deaf. He rightly warns against the use of tuning forks or other instruments held on the bones of the head as tests of hearing, because the vibration which is felt, not heard, may very often be mistaken for sound.

Dr Edward M. Gallaudet, president of the Columbia Institution for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., suggests the following terms for use in dividing the whole class of the deaf into its main sections, though it is obviously impossible to split them up into perfectly defined subdivisions, where, as a matter of fact, you have each degree of deafness and dumbness shading into the next:—the speaking deaf, the semi-speaking deaf, the mute deaf (or deaf-mute), the speaking semi-deaf, the mute semi-deaf, the hearing mute and the hearing semi-mute. He points out that the last two classes are usually persons of feeble mental power. We should exclude these altogether from the list, since their hearing is, presumably, perfect, and should add the semi-speaking semi-deaf before the mute semi-deaf. This would give two main divisions—those who cannot hear at all, and those who have partial hearing—with three subsections in each main division—those who speak, those who have partial speech and those who do not speak at all. Where the hearing is perfect it is paradoxical to class a person with the deaf, and the dumbness in such a case is due (where there is no malformation of the vocal organs) to inability of the mind to pay attention to, and imitate, what the ear really hears. In such cases this mental weakness is generally shown in other ways besides that of not hearing sounds. Probably no sign will be given of recognizing persons or objects around; there will be in fact, a general incapacity of the whole body and senses. It is incorrect to designate such persons as deaf and feeble-minded or deaf and idiotic, because in many cases their organs of hearing are as perfect as are other organs of their body, and they are no more deaf than blind, though they may pay no attention to what they hear any more than to what they see. They are simply weak in intellect, and this is shown by the disuse of any and all of their senses; hence it is incorrect to classify them according to one, and one only, of the evidences of this mental weakness.

Extent of Deafness.—The following table shows the number of deaf and dumb persons in the United Kingdom at successive censuses:—

Year. Number of Deaf and Dumb Persons.

United Kingdom. England & Wales. Scotland. Ireland.