OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vulcan

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​Vulcan (Volcanus), the Roman god of fire, and more especially of devouring flame (Virg. Aen. 5. 662). Whether he was also, like Hephaestus, the deity of smiths, is very doubtful; his surname Mulciber may rather be referred to his power to allay conflagrations. In the Comitium was an “area Volcani,” also called “Volcanal”, and here on the 23rd of August (Volcanalia) the Flamen Volcanalis sacrificed, and the heads of Roman families threw into the fire small fish, which the Tiber fishermen sold on the spot. This flamen also sacrificed on the 1st of May to Maia, who in an old prayer formula (Gellius 13. 23) was coupled with Volcanus as Maia Volcani. It is not easy to explain these survivals of an old cult. But in historical times the association of this god with conflagrations becomes very apparent; when Augustus organized the city in regiones and vici to check the constant danger from fires, the magistri vicorum (officers of administrative districts) worshipped him as Volcanus quietus augustus (C.I.L. vi. 801 and 802) and on the 23rd of August there was a sacrifice to him together with Ops Opifera and the Nymphae, which suggests the need of water in quenching the flames. At Ostia, where much of the corn was stored which fed the Roman population, the cult of this god became famous; and it is probable that the fixing of his festival in August by the early Romans had some reference to the danger to the newly harvested corn from fire in that month.  (W. W. F.*)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vulpecula et Anser

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​Vulpecula et Anser (“The Fox and Goose”), in astronomy, a modern constellation of the northern hemisphere, introduced by Hevelius, who catalogued twenty-seven stars. Interest is attached to Nova Vulpeculae, a “new” star discovered by Anthelm in 1670; T Vulpeculae, a short period variable; and the famous “Dumb-bell” nebula.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vratza

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​VRATZA, the capital of the department of Vratza, Bulgaria, on the northern slope of the Stara Planina and on a small sub tributary of the Danube. Pop. (1906) 14,832. Vratza is an archiepiscopal see and the headquarters of a military division. Wine, leather and gold and silver filigree are manufactured, and there is a school of sericulture.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vulpius, Christian August

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​Vulpius, Christian August (1762–1827), German author, was born at Weimar on the 23rd of January 1762, and was educated at Jena and Erlangen. In 1790 he returned to Weimar, where Goethe, who had entered into relations with Vulpius’s sister Christine (1765–1816), whom he afterwards married, obtained employment for him. Here Vulpius began, in imitation of Christian Heinrich Spiess, to write a scries of romantic narratives. Of these (about sixty in number) his Rinaldo Rinaldini (1797), the scene of which is laid in Italy during the middle ages, is the best. In 1797 Vulpius was given an appointment on the Weimar library, of which he became chief librarian in 1806. He died at Weimar on the 25th of June 1827.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nizhne-Tagilsk

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​NIZHNE-TAGILSK, popularly known as Tagil, a town and ironworks of Russia, in the government of Perm, stands in a longitudinal valley on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains, within a few miles of the place where the Tagil, cutting through the eastern wall of the valley, escapes to the lowlands to join the Tura, a tributary of the Tobol. The southern part of this valley is occupied by the upper Tagil, and its northern portion by the upper Tura, from which the Tagil is separated by a low watershed. Pop. (1897) 30,000, all Great-Russians and chiefly Nonconformists. The town is connected by railway (the first in Siberia) with Perm and Ekaterinburg, the latter distant 88 m. to the S.S.E. It was founded in 1725 by the Russian mine-owner Demidov, and is still the property of his family. Nizhne-Tagilsk is a central foundry for a number of iron-mines and other works scattered in the valley of the Tagil and its tributary the Salda. Gold, platinum and copper are also mined at Nizhne-Tagilsk. The town carries on a brisk corn trade. The inhabitants make wooden boxes and trays, which are sent to the fairs of Irbit and Nizhniy-Novgorod.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nizhne-Udinsk

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​NIZHNE-UDINSK, a town of East Siberia, in the government of Irkutsk, 315 m. by rail W.N.W. of Irkutsk, on the Siberian railway, and on the Uda river. It is a centre for the Biryusa gold mines, and in winter the head of a line of communication with the Lena and Bratsky Ostrog, on the Angara. Pop. (1897) 5803.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nivelles

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​NIVELLES (Flem. Nyvel), a town of Belgium in the province of Brabant, situated on the Thines 19 m. S. of Brussels. Pop. (1904) 12,109. It is a busy little place with many industries, notably the manufacture of parchment. The town is supposed to owe its origin to the foundation of a convent on the spot by Itta or Iduberge, wife of Pippin of Landen. The Romanesque church of St Gertrude, named after Itta’s daughter, dates from the 11th century, but has been badly restored and is disfigured by a heavy tower. On the top of the tower is the effigy of a man in iron who strikes the hours with a hammer. He is called by the townspeople Jean de Nivelles, a celebrated baron of the 15th century whose title eventually became merged in that of the count de Hornes (Horn). The church is supposed to occupy the site of Itta’s convent. Close to Nivelles is Seneffe, where Condé defeated William of Orange in 1674, and at Nivelles itself the French under Marceau defeated the Austrians in 1794.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nixon, John

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​NIXON, JOHN (1815–1899), English mining engineer and colliery proprietor, was born at Barlow, Durham, on the 10th of May 1815, the son of a farmer. He was educated at the village school, and at an academy in Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he distinguished himself in mathematics. Leaving school at fourteen, he worked on his father’s farm for two years, and then apprenticed himself to Mr Joseph Gray, one of the leading mining engineers in the north of England, and agent to the second marquis of Bute; subsequently he obtained employment as “overman” at one of the Bute collieries in Durham. In 1839 an advertisement drew him to the South Wales coalfield, where he was engaged in mine-surveying, and whence he proceeded to France as engineer to a coal and iron company. Returning to England, he noticed while travelling on one of the Thames steamers that the Welsh coal in use gave off no smoke and was preferred to north country coal both on this ground and because of its greater power-producing efficiency. His experience in France now suggested to him that a profitable market for this coal might be established among the French iron-founders and manufacturers generally who had hitherto imported English north country coal. For some time he was unable to procure any of this special Welsh coal. Eventually, however, by expending all his small savings he secured a cargo, freighted a small craft, and sent it across to Nantes, where with some difficulty he persuaded the local manufacturers to try it on the understanding that he bore the expense of the experiments. These tests, carried out under Nixon’s personal directions, proved highly successful, and in due course the French government gave him a contract for Welsh coal for the French navy. Nixon’s visit to Nantes laid the foundations of the Welsh steam-coal trade, English manufacturers and shipowners imitating the example of their French rivals. At first Nixon only sold the coal on commission, but eventually acquired what appeared to him a prospective field for steam-coal in the Aberdare valley, and after seven years’ working at last struck a rich seam. This property is now known as Nixon’s Navigation Collieries. Nixon subsequently acquired or developed other South Wales steam collieries, which yielded him a considerable fortune. He was also the inventor of many mechanical improvements in colliery working. He died in London on the 3rd of June 1899.
See J. E. Vincent, John Nixon, Pioneer of the Steam Coal Trade in South Wales (London, 1900).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nixie

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​NIXIE, or Nixy, a female water-sprite. The word is adapted from Ger. Nixe, the male water-sprite being Nix. The general term covering both the male and female is “nicker,” a kelpie. This also appears in Dutch nikker. The Old Teutonic nikus may be connected with the root which appears in Gr. νίζειν or νίπτειν, “to wash.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nizam

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​NIZAM, the hereditary title of the reigning prince of Hyderabad (q.v.) in India, derived from an Arabic word meaning order, or administration. The same word is found in Nazim, applied to the Nawab of Bengal, and in Nizamat, the old term for criminal jurisdiction. Nizam-ul-Mulk (＝“administrator of the kingdom”) was the title of Asaf Jah, the founder of the dynasty, a very able soldier and minister of the court of Aurangzeb, who was appointed governor of the Deccan in 1713, and established his independence before his death in 1748.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nivernais, Louis Charles Barbon Mancini Mazarini, Duc de

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​NIVERNAIS, LOUIS CHARLES BARBON MANCINI MAZARINI, Duc de (1716–1798), French diplomatist and writer, was born in Paris on the 16th of December 1716, son of Philippe Jules François, duc de Nevers, and Maria Anne Spinola, and great-nephew of Cardinal Mazarin. He was educated at the College Louis le Grand, and married at the age of fourteen. He served in the campaigns in Italy (1733) and Bohemia (1740), but had to give up soldiering on account of his weak health. He was subsequently ambassador at Rome (1748–1752), Berlin (1755–1756) and London, where he negotiated the treaty of Paris (10th of February 1763). From 1787 to 1789 he was a member of the Council of State. He did not emigrate during the Revolution, but lost all his money and was imprisoned in 1793. He recovered his liberty after the fall of Robespierre, and died in Paris on the 25th of February 1798. In 1743 he was elected to the Academy for a poem entitled Délie, and from 1763 he devoted the greater part of his time to the administration of the duchy of Nevers and to belles-lettres. He wrote much and with great facility; but his writings are of little value, his Fables being his best
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schreiner, William Philip

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SCHREINER, WILLIAM PHILIP (1837-1919), South African lawyer and statesman, the youngest son of a German missionary, was born in the district of Herschel, Cape Colony. He studied law at Cape Town and at Cambridge and London universities. He was called to the bar (Inner Temple) in 1882 and the same year returned to the Cape where he was admitted an advocate of the Supreme Court. He soon attained success and was for many years leader of the Cape bar. In 1893 Schreiner, who had been legal adviser to the High Commissioner since 1887, began his political career as attorney-general in the second Ministry of Cecil Rhodes. He resigned the same year, took the same portfolio again in Sept. 1894 and remained in office until the Jameson Raid brought about the downfall of the Rhodes Ministry. In 1898, having helped to bring about the fall of the Sprigg Ministry, Schreiner became Prime Minister of Cape Colony and held that position when the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 began. During the crisis which preceded the outbreak of hostilities he allowed the passage of armaments to the Dutch republics, and when the war broke out he wished to keep Cape Colony neutral (see 5.244). Acute differences in the Cabinet caused Schreiner to resign office in June 1900. Later he advocated, unsuccessfully, the federation instead of the unification of the South African colonies. In 1914 he accepted the office of High Commissioner of the Union in London and held that post until his death. He died at Llandrindod Wells on June 28 1919. Schreiner married, in 1884, Frances, sister of F. W. Reitz, President of the Orange Free State. He was a brother of Olive Schreiner, the novelist. Schreiner was a man of high attainments, great industry and impressive speech. His qualities showed at their best at the bar, and the proper crown of his career would have been a seat on the bench. But as a politician he suffered from a lack of suppleness which disqualified him from becoming a popular leader. He had also too much of the cross-bench mind. He was a sincere friend of the natives, and, in 1908-9 successfully defended Dinizulu against the charges of treason and murder brought against him. He also went to London as a delegate of the Coloured Races Political Association to oppose restrictions in the Act of Union.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Scharlieb, Mary Dacomb

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SCHARLIEB, MARY DACOMB (1845- ), British surgeon, was born in London June 18 1845, the daughter of William Candler Bird. She was educated privately, and married a barrister who was then practising in India. She wished to study medicine, at that time an extremely difficult profession for a woman to adopt, and entered the medical college at Madras, receiving its diploma in 1878. She afterwards went to England and studied at the London School of Medicine for Women, taking her degree as Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1882 with very high honours. In 1883 she returned to India, and became lecturer in midwifery and gynæcology at the Madras Medical College and examiner in the same subjects to the university of Madras. In 1888 she took her London degree of M.D., and from 1887 to 1902 was surgeon at the New Hospital for Women, being senior surgeon from 1889. In 1887 she was appointed lecturer on forensic medicine to the Royal Free Hospital, in 1889 lecturer on midwifery, and in 1902 chief gynæcologist. She retired from these posts in 1909. In 1917 Mrs. Scharlieb was made C.B.E. She was a member of the royal commission on Venereal Diseases (1913-16), and published A Woman's Words to Women (1905); The Mother's Guide (1905); The Seven Ages of Woman (1915); The Hope of the Future (1916); The Welfare of the Expectant Mother (1919).
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schimmel, Hendrik Jan

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SCHIMMEL, HENDRIK JAN (1825–1906), Dutch poet and novelist (see 24.326), spent his last years in work on spiritualistic research. He died at Bussum in 1906.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schlich, Sir William

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SCHLICH, SIR WILLIAM (1840- ), British forestry expert, was born at Darmstadt Feb. 28 1840, and educated there and at the university of Giessen. In 1866 he entered the Indian Forests Department, became conservator of Forests in 1871, and ten years later inspector-general of Forests to the Government of India. He was one of the pioneers of the study of forestry in England, organizing the first school at Cooper's Hill, which was afterwards transferred to Oxford in 1905. He was appointed professor of Forestry at Oxford the same year. Among his books on the subject are A Manual of Forestry (1889-95; 3 vols.), and Forestry in the United Kingdom (1904). In 1901 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1909 he was created K.C.I.E.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schmoller, Gustav

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SCHMOLLER, GUSTAV (1838-1917), German political economist (see 24.344), died in 1917.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Scheer, Reinhold

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SCHEER, REINHOLD (1863- ), German admiral and ultimately commander-in-chief of the German battle fleet in the World War, was born Sept. 30 1863 at Obernkirchen in Hesse-Nassau. He served in the German colonial wars in Cameroon and E. Africa and was appointed in 1903 to the command of the 1st Torpedo Division. Subsequently he was for a time at the head of the Central Section in the Imperial Navy Office. In 1913 he was promoted to the rank of vice-admiral and was made commander of the 2nd squadron. In 1916 he was appointed to the command of the German battle fleet (Hochseeflotte). He was in command of the Fleet at the battle of Jutland, and in his book Deutschland's Hochseeflotte im Weltkrieg claimed to have won a victory there. In July 1918 he was made chief of the Admiralty staff and again in Aug. of the same year chief in command of the Fleet. In Dec. 1918 he was retired.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schreiner, Olive

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SCHREINER, OLIVE (c. 1862-1920), pen-name of Mrs. Cronwright Schreiner, was born in Basutoland, the daughter of a German missionary sent out by the London missionary
society. She was a sister of W. P. Schreiner, afterwards Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and married in 1894 Mr. S. C. Cronwright, also a S. African politician. Early in 1882, when she was 20 years old, she brought to England the MS. of her first novel, The Story of an African Farm, and submitted it first to George Meredith, then reader for Chapman & Hall. He praised the book and suggested certain alterations, most of which she accepted. Eventually it was published by the firm in 1883, over the pseudonym “Ralph Iron.” Its success was immediate, but nothing else that she wrote had quite the same literary quality. Her later work includes Dreams (1891); Trooper Peter Halkett of Mashonaland (1897), a much-criticized attack on the first settlers in Rhodesia; An English South African's View of the Situation (1899); and Woman and Labour (1911), a fragment of an earlier MS. which had been burnt with other papers during the S. African War. She died at Cape Town in Dec. 1920.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schiff, Jacob Henry

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SCHIFF, JACOB HENRY (1847-1920), American banker and philanthropist, was born at Frankfort-on-Main, Germany, Jan. 10 1847. He was educated in the schools of Frankfort and for a time worked in a banking house. In 1865 he went to New York City and two years later organized there the brokerage firm of Budge, Schiff & Co., which was dissolved in 1873. In 1875 he married a daughter of Solomon Loeb, head of the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., was taken into the firm and, on Loeb's retirement in 1885, succeeded to the leadership. Meanwhile, largely due to Schiff's energy, the firm had greatly expanded its business and had become known throughout the financial world. In 1897 his house took an active part in reorganizing the Union Pacific railway, which later secured control of the Southern Pacific, assisting E. H. Harriman in these transactions. In 1901 a struggle took place between Schiff and the Harriman interests on the one side and James J. Hill and J. P. Morgan on the other for possession of the Northern Pacific railway. The resulting compromise was the formation of the Northern Securities Co. as a holding company for their joint interests (see 27.733). After the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 Schiff introduced Japanese war loans in America and subsequently was decorated by the Mikado. In his later years he gave much personal attention to charities, especially for the Jewish people, and on his seventieth birthday distributed $700,000 among various charitable organizations and public institutions. He was a founder and president of the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, New York City, and vice-president and trustee of the Baron de Hirsch Fund. In 1903 he presented a Semitic Museum to Harvard. He was vice-president of the N.Y. Chamber of Commerce and a director in many large corporations. He died in New York City Sept. 25 1920. His estate was estimated at about $50,000,000. He bequeathed $1,350,000 to various institutions, most of which had received benefactions during his life. The largest bequests were $500,000 to the Federation for the support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City and $300,000 to the Montefiore Home.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pindaris

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​PINDARIS, a word of uncertain origin, applied to the irregular horsemen who accompanied the Mahratta armies in India during the 18th century when the Mughal Empire was breaking up, loosely organized under self-chosen leaders, each band was usually attached to one or other of the great Mahratta chieftains. Their special characteristic was that they received no pay, but rather purchased the privilege of plundering on their own account. The majority of them seem to have been Mahommedans: when the regular forces of the Mahrattas had been broken up in the campaigns conducted by Sir Arthur Wellesley and Lord Lake in 1802–04, the Pindaris made their headquarters in Malwa, under the tacit protection of Sindhia and Holkar. They ere accustomed to assemble every year at the beginning of November, and sally forth into British territory in search of plunder In one such raid upon the Masulipatam coast they plundered 339 villages, killing or wounding 682 persons, torturing 3600 and carrying off property worth a quarter of a million. In 1808-09 they plundered Gujarat, and in 1812 Mirzapur In 1814 they were reckoned at 25,000 to 30,000 horsemen, half of them well armed. At last the evil became intolerable, and in 1817 the marquess of Hastings obtained the consent of the East India Company to the organized campaign, known as the Pindari War. The Pindaris were surrounded on all sides by a great army, consisting of 120,000 men and 300 guns, which converged upon them from Bengal, the Deccan and Gujarat under the supreme command of Lord Hastings in person. Sindhia was overawed and forced to sign the treaty of Gwalior, consenting to aid in the extirpation of the Pindaris, whom he had hitherto protected. The Peshwa at Poona, the Bhonsla raja at Nagpur and the army of the infant Holkar each took up arms, but were separately defeated. The Pindaris themselves offered little opposition. Amir Khan, by far their most powerful leader, accepted the conditions offered to him; and his descendant is now Nawab of the state of Tonk in Rajputana. The rest surrendered or were hunted down, the fate of Chitu, one of the most notorious, being to perish in a tiger's den. These military operations were followed by the pacification of Central India under the administration of Sir John Malcolm.
See J. Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas (1826); and Major Ross of Bladensburg, Marquess of Hastings (Rulers of India Series) (1893).