[1] From the Greek letter [delta], [Delta]; in general, a
triangular-shaped object; also an alternative name for a trapezoid.
[2] Named after pyrites, which crystallizes in a typical form of this
class.
[3] From [Greek: plagios], placed sideways, referring to the absence
of planes and centre of symmetry.
[4] From [Greek: gyros], a ring or spiral, and [Greek: eidos], form.
[5] From [Greek: monos], single, and [Greek: klinein], to incline,
since one axis is inclined to the plane of the other two axes, which
are at right angles.
CRYSTAL PALACE, THE, a well-known English resort, standing high up in
grounds just outside the southern boundary of the county of London, in
the neighbourhood of Sydenham. The building, chiefly of iron and glass,
is flanked by two towers and is visible from far over the metropolis. It
measures 1608 ft. in length by 384 ft. across the transepts, and was
opened in its present site in 1854. The materials, however, were mainly
those of the hall set up in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851.
The designer was Sir Joseph Paxton. In the palace there are various
permanent exhibitions, while special exhibitions are held from time to
time, also concerts, winter pantomimes and other entertainments. In the
extensive grounds there is accommodation for all kinds of games: the
final tie of the Association Football Cup and other important football
matches are played here, and there are also displays of fireworks and
other attractions.
CSENGERY, ANTON (1822-1880), Hungarian publicist, and a historical
writer of great influence on his time, was born at Nagyvarad on the 2nd
of June 1822. He took, at an early date, a very active part in the
literary and political movements immediately preceding the Hungarian
Revolution of 1848. He and Baron Sigismund Kemeny may be considered as
the two founders of high-class Magyar journalism. After 1867 the
greatest of modern Hungarian statesmen, Francis Deak, attached Csengery
to his personal service, and many of the momentous state documents
inspired or suggested by Deak were drawn up by Csengery. In that manner
his influence, as represented by the text of many a statute regulating
the relations between Austria and Hungary, is one of an abiding
character. As a historical writer he excelled chiefly in brilliant and
thoughtful essays on the leading political personalities of his time,
such as Paul Nagy, Bertalan, Szemere and others. He also commenced a
translation of Macaulay's _History_. He died at Budapest on the 13th of
July 1880.
CSIKY, GREGOR (1842-1891), Hungarian dramatist, was born on the 8th of
December 1842 at Pankota, in the county of Arad. He studied Roman
Catholic theology at Pest and Vienna, and was professor in the Priests'
College at Temesvar from 1870 to 1878. In the latter year, however, he
joined the Evangelical Church, and took up literature. Beginning with
novels and works on ecclesiastical history, which met with some
recognition, he ultimately devoted himself to writing for the stage.
Here his success was immediate. In his _Az ellenallhatatlan_
("L'Irresistible"), which obtained a prize from the Hungarian Academy,
he showed the distinctive features of his talent--directness, freshness,
realistic vigour, and highly individual style. In rapid succession he
enriched Magyar literature with realistic _genre_-pictures, such as _A
Proletarok_ ("Proletariate"), _Buborckok_ ("Bubbles"), _Ket szerelem_
("Two Loves"), _A szegyenlos_ ("The Bashful"), _Athalia_, &c., in all of
which he seized on one or another feature or type of modern life,
dramatizing it with unusual intensity, qualified by chaste and
well-balanced diction. Of the latter, his classical studies may, no
doubt, be taken as the inspiration, and his translation of Sophocles and
Plautus will long rank with the most successful of Magyar translations
of the ancient classics. Among the best known of his novels are
_Arnold_, _Az Atlasz csalad_ ("The Atlas Family"). He died at Budapest
on the 19th of November 1891.
CSOKONAI, MIHALY VITEZ (1773-1805), Hungarian poet, was born at
Debreczen in 1773. Having been educated in his native town, he was
appointed while still very young to the professorship of poetry there;
but soon after he was deprived of the post on account of the immorality
of his conduct. The remaining twelve years of his short life were passed
in almost constant wretchedness, and he died in his native town, and in
his mother's house, when only thirty-one years of age. Csokonai was a
genial and original poet with something of the lyrical fire of Petofi,
and wrote a mock-heroic poem called _Dorottya or the Triumph of the
Ladies at the Carnival_, two or three comedies or farces, and a number
of love-poems. Most of his works have been published, with a life, by
Schedel (1844-1847).
CSOMA DE KOROS, ALEXANDER (c. 1790-1842), or, as the name is written in
Hungarian, KOROSI CSOMA SANDOR, Hungarian traveller and philologist,
born about 1790 at Koros in Transylvania, belonged to a noble family
which had sunk into poverty. He was educated at Nagy-Enyed and at
Gottingen; and, in order to carry out the dream of his youth and
discover the origin of his countrymen, he divided his attention between
medicine and the Oriental languages. In 1820, having received from a
friend the promise of an annuity of 100 florins (about L10) to support
him during his travels, he set out for the East. He visited Egypt, and
made his way to Tibet, where he spent four years in a Buddhist monastery
studying the language and the Buddhist literature. To his intense
disappointment he soon discovered that he could not thus obtain any
assistance in his great object; but, having visited Bengal, his
knowledge of Tibetan obtained him employment in the library of the
Asiatic Society there, which possessed more than 1000 volumes in that
language; and he was afterwards supported by the government while he
published a Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar (both of which
appeared at Calcutta in 1834). He also contributed several articles on
the Tibetan language and literature to the _Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal_, and he published an analysis of the _Kah-Gyur_, the
most important of the Buddhist sacred books. Meanwhile his fame had
reached his native country, and procured him a pension from the
government, which, with characteristic devotion to learning, he devoted
to the purchase of books for Indian libraries. He spent some time in
Calcutta, studying Sanskrit and several other languages; but, early in
1842, he commenced his second attempt to discover the origin of the
Hungarians, but he died at Darjiling on the 11th of April 1842. An
oration was delivered in his honour before the Hungarian Academy by
Eotvos, the novelist.
CTENOPHORA, in zoology, a class of jelly-fish which were briefly
described by Professor T. H. Huxley in 1875 (see ACTINOZOA, _Ency.
Brit._ 9th ed. vol. i.) as united with what we now term Anthozoa to
form the group Actinozoa; but little was known of the intimate structure
of those remarkable and beautiful forms till the appearance in 1880 of
C. Chun's Monograph of the Ctenophora occurring in the Bay of Naples.
They may be defined as Coelentera which exhibit both a radial and
bilateral symmetry of organs; with a stomodaeum; with a mesenchyma which
is partly gelatinous but partly cellular; with eight meridianal rows of
vibratile paddles formed of long fused or matted cilia; lacking
nematocysts (except in one genus). An example common on the British
coasts is furnished by _Hormiphora_ (_Cydippe_). In outward form this is
an egg-shaped ball of clear jelly, having a mouth at the pointed (oral)
pole, and a sense-organ at the broader (aboral) pole. It possesses eight
meridians (costae) of iridescent paddles in constant vibration, which
run from near one pole towards the other; it has also two pendent
feathery tentacles of considerable length, which can be retracted into
pouches. The mouth leads into an ectodermal stomodaeum ("stomach"), and
the latter into an endodermal funnel (infundibulum); these two are
compressed in planes at right angles to one another, the sectional long
axis of the stomodaeum lying in the so-called sagittal (stomodaeal or
gastric) plane, that of the funnel in the transverse (tentacular or
funnel) plane. From the funnel, canals are given off in three
directions; (a) a pair of paragastric (stomachal, or stomodaeal) canals
run orally, parallel to the stomodaeum, and end blindly near the mouth;
(b) a pair of perradial canals run in the transverse plane towards the
equator of the animal; each of these becomes divided into two short
canals at the base of the tentacle sheath which they supply, but has
previously given off a pair of short interradial canals, which again
bifurcate into two adradial canals; all these branches lie in the
equatorial plane of the animal, but the eight adradial canals then open
into eight meridianal canals which run orally and aborally under the
costae; (c) a pair of aboral vessels which run towards the sense-organ,
each of which bifurcates; of the four vessels thus formed, two only open
at the sides of the sense-organ, forming the so-called excretory
apertures. These three sets of structures, with the funnel from which
they rise, make up the endodermal coelenteron, or gastro-vascular
system. The generative organs are endodermal by origin, borne at the
sides of the meridianal canals as indicated by the signs [male]
[female]. There exists a subepithelial plexus with nerve cells and
fibres, similar to that of jelly-fishes. The sense-organ of the aboral
pole is complex, and lies under a dome of fused cilia shaped like an
inverted bell-jar; it consists of an otolith, formed of numerous
calcareous spheroids, which is supported on four plates of fused cilia
termed balancers, but is otherwise free. The ciliated ectoderm below the
organ is markedly thickened, and perhaps functionally represents a
nerve-ganglion: from it eight ciliated furrows radiate outwards, two
passing under each balancer as through an archway, and diverge each to
the head of a meridianal costa. These ciliated furrows stain deeply with
osmic acid, and nervous impulses are certainly transmitted along them.
Locomotion is effected by strokes of the paddles in an aboral direction,
driving the animal mouth forwards through the water: each paddle or comb
(Gr. [Greek: kteis]; hence Ctenophora) consists of a plate of fused or
matted cilia set transversely to the costa. The myoepithelial cells
(formerly termed neuro-muscular cells), characteristic of other
Coelentera, are not to be found in this group. On the other hand there
are well-marked muscle fibres in definite layers, derived from special
mesoblastic cells in the embryo, which are embedded in a jelly; these in
their origin and arrangement are quite comparable to the mesoderm of
Triploblastica, and, although the muscle-cells of some jelly-fish
exhibit a somewhat similar condition, nothing so highly specialized as
the mesenchyme of Ctenophora occurs in any other Coelenterate. The
nematocysts being nearly absent from their group, their chief function
is carried out by adhesive lasso-cells.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Schematic drawing of a Cydippid from the side.
(After Chun.)
A, Adradial canals.
F, Infundibulum.
I, Interradial canal.
M, Meridianal canal lying under a costa.
N, Ciliated furrow from sense pole to costa.
Pg, Paragastric canal.
SO, Sense-organ.
St, Stomodaeum.
Subs, Subsagittal costa.
Subt, Subtentacular costa.
T, Tentacle.
Ts, Boundaries of tentacle-sheath.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Schematic drawing of a Cydippid from the aboral
pole. (After Chun.)
T (centrally), Tentacular canal, and (distally) tentacle.
[male], Position of testes.
[female], Position of ovaries; other letters in fig. 1. The stomodaeum
lies in the sagittal plane, the funnel and tentacles in the
transverse or tentacular plane.]