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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Curassow

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​CURASSOW (Cracinae), a group of gallinaceous birds forming one of the subfamilies of Cracidae, the species of which are among the largest and most splendid of the game birds of South America, where they may be said to represent the pheasants of the Old World. They are large, heavy birds, many of them rivalling the turkey in size, with short wings, long and broad tail, and strong bill. In common with the family to which they belong, they have the hind toe of the foot placed on a level with the others, thus resembling the pigeons, and unlike the majority of gallinaceous birds. With the exception of a single species found north of Panama, the curassows are confined to the tropical forests of South America, east of the Andes, and not extending south of Paraguay. They live in small flocks, and are arboreal in their habits, only occasionally descending to the ground, while always roosting and building their nests on the branches of trees. Their nests are neat structures, made of slender branches interlaced with stems of grass, and lined internally with leaves. They feed on fruits, seeds and insects. They are often tamed in several parts of South America, but have never been thoroughly domesticated anywhere. Large numbers of these birds were, according to K. J. Temminck, brought to Holland from Dutch Guiana towards the end of the 18th century, and got so completely acclimatized and domesticated as to breed in confinement like ordinary poultry; but the establishments in which these were kept were broken up during the troubles that followed on the French Revolution. Their flesh is said to be exceedingly white and delicate, and this, together with their size and the beauty of their plumage, would make the curassows an important gain to the poultry yards of Europe, if they were not such bad breeders. The subfamily of curassows contains four genera and twelve species, all confined to South America, with the exception of Crax globicera—a Central American species, which extends northward into Mexico. This bird is about 3 ft. in length, of a glossy black colour over the whole body, excepting the abdomen and tail coverts, which are white. In common with the other species of this genus its head bears a crest of feathers curled forward at the tips, which can be raised or depressed at will. The female is of a reddish-brown colour, although varying greatly in this respect, and was formerly described as a separate species—the red curassow. In another species, Crax incommoda, the greater part of the black plumage is beautifully varied with narrow transverse bars of white. The galeated curassow (Pauxi galeata) is peculiar in having a large blue tubercle, hard and stony externally, but cellular within, and resembling a hen’s egg in size and shape, situated at the base of the hill. It only appears after the first moulting, and is much larger in the male than in the female.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ducas (historian)

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​DUCAS (15th cent.), Byzantine historian, flourished under Constantine XIII. (XI.) Dragases, the last emperor of the East, about 1450. The dates of his birth and death are unknown. He was the grandson of Michael Ducas (see above). After the fall of Constantinople, he was employed in various diplomatic missions by Dorino and Domenico Gateluzzi, princes of Lesbos, where he had taken refuge. He was successful in securing a semi-independence for Lesbos until 1462, when it was taken and annexed to Turkey by Sultan Mahommed II. It is known that Ducas survived this event, but there is no record of his subsequent life. He was the author of a history of the period 1341–1462; his work thus continues that of Gregoras and Cantacuzene, and supplements Phrantzes and Chalcondyles. There is a preliminary chapter of chronology from Adam to John Palaeologus I. Although barbarous in style, the history of Ducas is both judicious and trustworthy, and it is the most valuable source for the closing years of the Greek empire. The account of the capture of Constantinople is of special importance. Ducas was a strong supporter of the union of the Greek and Latin churches, and is very bitter against those who rejected even the idea of appealing to the West for assistance against the Turks.
The history, preserved (without a title) in a single Paris MS., was first edited by I. Bullialdus (Bulliaud) (Paris, 1649); later editions are in the Bonn Corpus scriptorum Hist. Byz., by I. Bekker (1834) and Migne, Patrologia Graeca, clvii. The Bonn edition contains a 15th century Italian translation by an unknown author, found by Leopold Ranke in one of the libraries of Venice, and sent by him to Bekker.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dubuque

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See also Dubuque, Iowa on Wikipedia; the 9th edition; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​DUBUQUE, a city and the county-seat of Dubuque county, Iowa, U.S.A., on the Mississippi river, opposite the boundary line between Wisconsin and Illinois. Pop. (1890) 30,311; (1900) 36,297; (1905, state census) 41,941 (including 6835 foreign-born, the majority of whom were German and Irish); (1910 U.S. census) 38,494. Dubuque is served by the Illinois Central, the Chicago, Milwaukee & Saint Paul (which has repair shops here), the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Chicago Great Western railways; it also has a considerable river traffic. The river is spanned here by a railway bridge and two wagon bridges. The business portion of the city lies on the low lands bordering the river; many of the residences are built on the slopes and summits of bluffs commanding extensive and picturesque views. Among the principal buildings are the Carnegie-Stout free public library (which in 1908 had 23,600 volumes, exclusive of the valuable Senator Allison collection of public documents), the public high school, and the house of the Dubuque Club. Dubuque is a Roman Catholic archiepiscopal see, and is the seat of St Joseph’s College (1873), a small Roman Catholic institution; of Wartburg Seminary (1854), a small Evangelical Lutheran theological school; of the German Presbyterian Theological School of the North-west (1852); of St Joseph’s Ladies’ Academy; and of Bayless Business College. Fifteen miles from Dubuque is a monastery of Trappist monks. Among the city’s charitable institutions are the Finley and the Mercy hospitals, a home for the friendless, a rescue home, a House of the Good Shepherd, and an insane asylum. In 1900 Dubuque ranked fourth and in 1905 fifth among the cities of the state as a manufacturing centre, the chief products being those of the planing mills and machine shops, and furniture, sashes and doors, liquors, carriages, wagons, coffins, clothing, boots and shoes, river steam boats, barges, torpedo boats, &c., and the value of the factory product being $9,279,414 in 1905 and $9,651,247 in 1900. The city lies in a region of lead and zinc mines, quantities of zinc ore in the form of black-jack being taken from the latter. Dubuque is important as a distributing centre for lumber, hardware, groceries and dry-goods.
As early as 1788 Julien Dubuque (1765–1810), attracted by the lead deposits in the vicinity, which were then being crudely worked by the Sauk and Fox Indians, settled here and carried on the mining industry until his death. In June 1829 miners from Galena, Illinois, attempted to make a settlement here in direct violation of Indian treaties, but were driven away by United States troops under orders from Colonel Zachary Taylor. Immediately after the Black Hawk War, white settlers began coming to the mines. Dubuque was laid out under an act of Congress approved on the 2nd of July 1836, and was incorporated in 1841.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ducange, Victor Henri Joseph Brahain

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​DUCANGE, VICTOR HENRI JOSEPH BRAHAIN (1783–1833), French novelist and dramatist, was born on the 24th of November 1783 at the Hague, where his father was secretary to the French embassy. Dismissed from the civil service at the Restoration, Victor Ducange became one of the favourite authors of the liberal party, and owed some part of his popularity to the fact that he was fined and imprisoned more than once for his outspokenness. He was six months in prison for an article in his journal Le Diable rose, ou le petit courrier de Lucifer (1822); for Valentine (1821), in which the royalist excesses in the south of France were pilloried, he was again imprisoned; and after the publication of Hélène ou l’amour et la guerre (1823), he took refuge for some time in Belgium. Ducange wrote numerous plays and melodramas, among which the most successful were Marco Loricot, ou le petit Chouan de 1830 (1836), and Trente ans, ou la vie d’un joueur (1827), in which Fréderick Lemaître found one of his best parts. Many of his books were prohibited, ostensibly for their coarseness, but perhaps rather for their political tendencies. He died in Paris on the 15th of October 1833.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ducas (family)

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​DUCAS, Dukas or Doukas, the name of a Byzantine family which supplied several rulers to the Eastern Empire. The family first came into prominence during the 9th century, but was ruined when Constantine Ducas, a son of the general Andronicus Ducas, lost his life in his effort to obtain the imperial crown in 913. Towards the end of the 10th century there appeared another family of Ducas, which was perhaps connected with the earlier family through the female line and was destined to attain to greater fortune. A member of this family became emperor as Constantine X. in 1059, and Constantine’s son Michael VII. ruled, nominally in conjunction with his younger brothers, Andronicus and Constantine, from 1071 to 1078. Michael left a son, Constantine, and, says Gibbon, “a daughter of the house of Ducas illustrated the blood, and confirmed the succession, of the Comnenian dynasty.” The family was also allied by marriage with other great Byzantine houses, and after losing the imperial dignity its members continued to take an active part in public affairs. In 1204 Alexius Ducas, called Mourzoufle, deposed the emperor Isaac Angelus and his son Alexius, and vainly tried to defend Constantinople against the attacks of the Latin crusaders. Nearly a century and a half later one Michael Ducas took a leading part in the civil war between the emperors John V. Palaeologus and John VI. Cantacuzenus, and Michael’s grandson was the historian Ducas (see below). Many of the petty sovereigns who arose after the destruction of the Eastern Empire sought to gain prestige by adding the famous name of Ducas to their own.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dubois, Paul

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​DUBOIS, PAUL (1829–1905), French sculptor and painter, was born at Nogent-sur-Seine on the 18th of July 1829. He studied law to please his family, and art to please himself, and finally adopted the latter, and placed himself under Toussaint. After studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, Dubois went to Rome. His first contributions to the Paris Salon (1860) were busts of “The Countess de B.” and “A Child.” For his first statues, “St John the Baptist” and “Narcissus at the Bath” (1863), he was awarded a medal of the second class. The statue of “The Infant St John,” which had been modelled in Florence in 1860, was exhibited in Paris in bronze, and was acquired by the Luxemburg. “A Florentine Singer of the Fifteenth Century,” one of the most popular statuettes in Europe, was shown in 1865; “The Virgin and Child” appeared in the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1867; “The Birth of Eve” was produced in 1873, and was followed by striking busts of Henner, Dr Parrot, Paul Baudry, Pasteur, Gounod and Bonnat, remarkable alike for life, vivacity, likeness, refinement and subtle handling. The chief work of Paul Dubois was “The Tomb of General Lamoricière” in the cathedral of Nantes, a brilliant masterpiece conceived in the Renaissance spirit, with allegorical figures and groups representing Warlike Courage, Charity, Faith and Meditation, as well as bas-reliefs and enrichments; the two first-named works were separately exhibited in the Salon of 1877. The medallions represent Wisdom, Hope, Justice, Force, Rhetoric, Prudence and Religion. The statue of the “Constable Anne de Montmorency” was executed for Chantilly, and that of “Joan of Arc” (1889) for the town of Reims. The Italian influence which characterized the earlier work of Dubois disappeared as his own individuality became clearly asserted. As a painter he restricted himself mainly to portraiture. “My Children” (1876) being probably his most noteworthy achievement. His drawings and copies after the Old Masters are of peculiar excellence: they include “The Dead Christ” (after Sebastian del Piombo) and “Adam and Eve” (after Raphael). In 1873 Dubois was appointed keeper of the Luxemburg Museum. He succeeded Guillaume as director of the École des Beaux-Arts, 1878, and Perraud as member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Twice at the Salon he obtained the medal of honour (1865 and 1876), and once at the Universal Exhibition (1878). He also won numerous other distinctions, and was appointed grand cross of the Legion of Honour. He was made a member of several European orders, and in 1895 was elected an honorary foreign academician of the Royal Academy of London. He died at Paris in 1905.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ducat

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​DUCAT, the name of a coin, generally of gold, and of varying value, formerly in use in many European countries. It was first struck by Roger II. of Sicily as duke of Apulia, and bore an inscription “Sit tibi, Christe, datus, quem tu regis, iste ducatus” (Lord, thou rulest this duchy, to thee be it dedicated); hence, it is said, the name. Between 1280 and 1284 Venice also struck ​a gold coin, known first as the ducat, afterwards as the zecchino or sequin, the ducat becoming merely a money of account. The ducat was also current in Holland, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and Denmark (see Numismatics). A gold coin termed a ducat was current in Hanover during the reigns of George I. and George III. A pattern gold coin was also struck by the English mint in 1887 for a proposed decimal coinage. On the reverse was the inscription “one ducat” within an oak wreath; above “one hundred pence,” and below the date between two small roses. There is a gold coin termed a ducat in the Austria-Hungary currency, of the value of nine shillings and fourpence.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ducasse, Pierre Emmanuel Albert

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​DUCASSE, PIERRE EMMANUEL ALBERT, Baron (1813–1893), French historian, was born at Bourges on the 16th of November 1813. In 1849 he became aide-de-camp to Prince Jerome Bonaparte, ex-king of Westphalia, then governor of the Invalides, on whose commission he wrote Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la campagne de 1812 en Russie (1852). Subsequently he published Mémoires du roi Joseph (1853–1855), and, as a sequel, Histoire des négociations diplomatiques relatives aux traités de Morfontaine, de Lunéville et d’Amiens, together with the unpublished correspondence of the emperor Napoleon I. with Cardinal Fesch (1855–1856). From papers in the possession of the imperial family he compiled Mémoires du prince Eugène (1858–1860) and Réfutation des mémoires du duc de Raguse (1857), part of which was inserted by authority at the end of volume ix. of the Mémoires. He was attaché to Jerome’s son, Prince Napoleon, during the Crimean War, and wrote a Précis historique des opérations militaires en Orient, de mars 1854 à octobre 1855 (1857), which was completed many years later by a volume entitled La Crimée et Sébastopol de 1853 à 1856, documents intimes et inédits, followed by the complete list of the French officers killed or wounded in that war (1892). He was also employed by Prince Napoleon on the Correspondance of Napoleon I., and afterwards published certain letters, purposely omitted there, in the Revue historique. These documents, subsequently collected in Les Rois frères de Napoléon (1883), as well as the Journal de la reine Catherine de Westphalie (1893), were edited with little care and are not entirely trustworthy, but their publication threw much light on Napoleon I. and his entourage. His Souvenirs d’un officier du 2ᵉ Zouaves, and Les Dessous du coup d’état (1891), contain many piquant anecdotes, but at times degenerate into mere tittle-tattle. Ducasse was the author of some slight novels, and from the practice of this form of literature he acquired that levity which appears even in his most serious historical publications.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Castrum Minervae

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​CASTRUM MINERVAE (mod. Castro), an ancient town of the Sallentini in Calabria, 10 m. south of Hydruntum, with an ancient temple of Minerva, said to have been founded by Idomeneus, who formed the tribe of the Sallentini from a mixture of Cretans, Illyrians and Italian Locrians. It is also said to have been the place where Aeneas first landed in Italy, the port of which he named Portus Veneris. The temple had lost some of its importance in Strabo’s day.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Casuarina

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​CASUARINA, a genus of trees containing about 30 species, chiefly Australian, but a few Indo-Malayan. The long whip-like green branches are longitudinally grooved, and bear at the nodes whorls of small scale-leaves, the shoots resembling those of Equisetum (horse-tail). The flowers are unisexual; the staminate are borne in spikes, each flower consisting of a central stamen which is surrounded by two scale-like perianth-leaves. The pistillate are borne in dense spherical heads; each flower stands in the axil of a bract and consists of two united carpels flanked by a pair of bracteoles; the long styles hang out beyond the bracts, and the one-chambered ovary contains two ovules. In the fruit the bracteoles form two woody valves between which is a nut; the aggregate of fruits resemble small cones. Pollen is transferred by the wind to the long styles. The pollen-tube does not penetrate the ovule through the micropyle but enters at the opposite end—the chalaza. This anomaly was discovered by Dr M. Treub (see Annal. Jardin Botan. Buitenzorg, x. 1891), and is associated with a peculiar development of the ovule, and an increased number and peculiar form of the embryo-sacs (nacrospores). Treub proposed to separate Casuarina as a distinct group of Angiosperms, and suggested the following arrangement:—
| Angiospermae${\Bigg \$ | Porogamae${\Big \}$ | Dicotyledons. |
| Angiospermae${\Bigg \$ | Porogamae${\Big \}$ | Monocotyledons. |
| Chalazogamae (Casuarina). ||
The names of the two subdivisions recall the manner of entrance of the pollen-tube. More recent investigations, chiefly by Nawaschin and Miss Benson, on members of the orders Betulaceae, Fagaceae, Juglans and Ulmus, showed a recurrence in a greater or less degree of the various anomalies previously observed in Casuarina, and suggest that the affinity of Casuarina is with these orders of Dicotyledons.
The wood is very hard, and several species are valuable timber trees. From a fancied resemblance of the wood to that of the oak these trees are known as “oaks,” and the same species has different names in different parts such as “she-oak,” “swamp-oak,” “shingle-oak,” “river-oak,” “iron-wood,” “beef-wood,” &c.
See J. H. Maiden, Useful Native Plants of Australia (London and Sydney, 1889).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Casus Belli

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​CASUS BELLI, the technical term for cases in which a state holds itself justified in making war, if a certain course to which it objects is persisted in. Interference with the full exercise of a nation’s rights or independence, an affront to its dignity, an unredressed injury, are instances of casus belli. Most of the new compulsory treaties of arbitration entered into by Great Britain and other states exclude from their application cases affecting the “vital interests” or “national honour” of the contracting states. These may therefore be considered as a sort of definition of casus belli in so far as the high contracting parties to them are concerned.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Castro Urdiales

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​CASTRO URDIALES, a seaport of northern Spain, in the province of Santander, situated on the bay of Biscay and at the head of a branch railway connected with the Bilbao-Santander line. Pop. (1870) about 3500; (1900) 14,191. Castro Urdiales is a modern town, although its castle and parish church date from the middle ages. It was destroyed by the French in 1813, but speedily rebuilt and fortified. Its rapid rise in population and prosperity dates from the increased development of iron-mining and railway communication which took place after 1879. Its chief industries are iron-mining, fishing, and the preservation of fish, especially sardines, in oil. Between 1894 and 1904 the exports of iron ore rose from 277,200 tons to 516,574 tons.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Castrogiovanni

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​CASTROGIOVANNI (Arab. Kasr-Yani, a corruption of Castrum Ennae), a town and episcopal see of the province of Caltanisetta, Sicily, 95 m. by rail S.E. of Palermo, and 56 m. W. of Catania, situated 2605 ft. above sea-level, almost in the centre of the island, and commanding a magnificent view of the interior. Pop. (1901) 25,826. Enna was one of the cities of the Sicels, and the statement of Stephanus Byzantinus that it was colonized by Syracuse in 664 B.C. is improbable. The question is discussed by E. Pais, Atakta (Pisa, 1891), 63. It does not appear in history before the time of Dionysius I. of Syracuse, who, after unsuccessful attempts, finally acquired possession of it by treachery about 397 B.C. Its natural position rendered it a fortress of great importance, and it is frequently mentioned in subsequent history. In 134–132 it was the headquarters of the slave revolt, and was only reduced by treachery. Cicero speaks of it as a place of some importance, but in imperial times it seems to have been of little account. In A.D. 837 the Saracens attempted to take it, but without success; and it was again only by treachery that they were able to take it in 859. In 1087 it fell into the hands of the Normans; and the existing remains of fortifications are entirely medieval. There are indeed no remains of earlier days. The cathedral, founded in 1307, is of some interest. There are no remains of the famous temple of Demeter, from which Verres, as Cicero tells us, removed the bronze statue of the goddess. The lake of Pergus, where Persephone, according to one of the myths, was carried off by Hades, lies 4 m. to the south. The myth itself must have had some local origin, but has had so much Greek detail grafted upon it that the very names of the earlier Sicel deities have been displaced.