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

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​ROE-BUCK, the smallest of the British deer (a full-grown buck standing not more than 27 in. high at the shoulder), the typical representative of a genus (Capreolus) in which the antlers lack a brow-tine and belong to what is characterized as the forked type, while the tail is rudimentary (see Deer). The antlers are short, upright and deeply furrowed, the beam forking at about two-thirds of its length, and the upper prong again dividing, thus making three points. The coat in summer is foxy red above and white below; in winter this changes to a greyish fawn, with a white rump-patch. The roe-buck or roe-deer (Capreolus caprea, or C. capreolus) inhabits southern and temperate Europe as far east as the Caucasus, where, as in Syria, it is probably represented by another race or species. It frequents woods, preferring such as have a large growth of underwood and are in the neighbourhood of cultivated ground. The latter it visits in the evening in search of food; and where roe are numerous the damage done to growing crops is considerable. Pairing takes place in August, but the fawns are not born till the following May. According to one theory, the germ lies dormant until December, when it begins to develop; but it is now believed that this long gestation is due to slow rather than arrested development. Roe were formerly abundant in all the wooded parts of Great Britain, but were gradually exterminated, till a century and a half ago they were unknown south of Perthshire. Since then the increase of plantations has led to the partial restoration of the species in the south of Scotland and the north of England; and it was reintroduced into Dorset early in the 19th century. These deer take readily to the water, and they have been known to swim across lochs more than half a mile in breadth. The Siberian roe (C. pygargus), which is common in the Altai, is larger and paler than the type species, with shorter and more hairy ears, a larger white rump-patch, and small irregular snags on the inner border of the antlers. The Manchurian roe (Capreolus manchuricus) is about the size of the European species, with antlers of the type of those of the Siberian roe, but more slender, and the coat shorter. Although described in 1889 as a local variety of the Siberian species, the Manchurian roe really appears, both as regards stature, hairiness and the black and white markings on the muzzle, much more nearly related to the European animal. This is the more remarkable seeing that the habitats of the two are separated by such an enormous tract of country. (R. L.*)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Roe, Edward Payson

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​ROE, EDWARD PAYSON (1838–1888), American novelist, was born in Moodna, Orange county, N.Y., on the 7th of March 1838. He studied at Williams College and at Auburn Theological Seminary; in 1862 became chaplain of the Second New York Cavalry, U.S.V., and in 1864 chaplain of Hampton Hospital, at Hampton, Virginia. In 1866–74 he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Highland Falls, N.Y. In 1874 he removed to Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, where he devoted himself to the writing of fiction and to horticulture. He died on the 19th of July 1888. During the Civil War he wrote weekly ​letters to the New York Evangelist, and subsequently lectured on the war and wrote for periodicals. Among his novels were Barriers Burned Away (1872), which first appeared as a serial in the Evangelist and made him widely known; What Can she Do? (1873), Opening of a Chestnut Burr (1874), From Jest to Earnest (1875), Near to Nature's Heart (1876), A Knight of the Nineteenth Century (1877), A Face Illumined (1878), A Day of Fate (1880), Without a Home (1881), Nature's Serial Story (1884), A Young Girl's Wooing (1884), An Original Belle (1885), He Fell in Love with his Wife (1886), The Earth Trembled (1887) and Miss Lou (left unfinished, 1888). He wrote also Play and Profit in My Garden (1873), Success with Small Fruits (1881) and The Home Acre (1887). His novels were very popular in their day, especially with middle-class readers in England and America, and were translated into several European languages. Their strong moral and religious purpose, and their being written by a clergyman, did much to break down a Puritan prejudice in America against works of fiction.
See E. P. Roe: Reminiscences of his Life (New York, 1899), by his sister, Mary A. Roe.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Roebling, John Augustus

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ROEBLING, JOHN AUGUSTUS (1806-1869), American civil engineer, was born at Mühlhausen, Prussia, on the 6th of June 1806. Soon after his graduation from the polytechnic school at Berlin he removed to the United States, and in 1831 entered on the practice of his profession in western Pennsylvania. He established at Pittsburg a manufactory of wire-rope, and in May 1845 completed his first important structure, a suspended aqueduct across the Allegheny river. This was followed by the Monongahela suspension bridge at Pittsburg and several suspended aqueducts on the Delaware & Hudson Canal. Removing his wire manufactory to Trenton, New Jersey, he began, in 1851, the erection at Niagara Falls of a long span wire suspension bridge with double roadway, for railway and carriage use (see Bridge), which was completed in 1855. Owing to the novelty of its design, the most eminent engineers regarded this bridge as foredoomed to failure; but, with its complete success, demonstrated by long use, the number of suspension bridges rapidly multiplied, the use of wire-ropes instead of chain-cables becoming all but universal. The completion, in 1867, of the still more remarkable suspension bridge over the Ohio river at Cincinnati, with a clear span of 1057 ft., added to Roebling's reputation, and his design for the great bridge spanning the East river between New York and Brooklyn was accepted. While personally engaged in laying out the towers for the bridge, Roebling received an accidental injury, which resulted in his death, at Brooklyn, from tetanus, on the 22nd of July 1869. The bridge was completed under the direction of his son, Washington Augustus Roebling (b. 1837), who introduced several modifications in the original plans.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rodosto

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​RODOSTO (Turkish, Tekir Dagh), a town of European Turkey, in the vilayet of Adrianople, on the coast of the Sea of Marmora, 78 m. W. of Constantinople. Pop. (1905) about 35,000, of whom half are Greeks. The picturesque Bay of Rodosto is enclosed by the great promontory of Combos, a spur about 2000 ft. in height from the hilly plateau to the north. The church of Panagia Rheumatocratissa contains the graves, with long Latin inscriptions, of the Hungarians who were banished from their country in 1686 by the imperialist captors of Buda. Rodosto was long a great depot for the produce of the Adrianople district, but its trade suffered when Dédéagatch became the terminus of the railway up the Maritza, and the town is now ​dependent on its maritime trade, especially its exports to Constantinople. It is the administrative centre of a district (sanjak) producing and exporting barley, oats, spelt and canary seed, and largely planted with mulberry trees, on which silkworms are fed. White cocoons are exported to western Europe (394 cwt. in 1901), silkworms' eggs to Russia and Persia.
Rodosto is the ancient Rhaedestus or Bisanthe, said to have been founded by Samians. In Xenophon's Anabasis it is mentioned as in the kingdom of the Thracian prince Seuthes. Its restoration by Justinian in the 6th century A.D. is chronicled by Procopius. In 813 and again in 1206 it was sacked by the Bulgarians, but it continues to appear as a place of considerable note in later Byzantine history.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Merrimac

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​MERRIMAC, a river in the north-eastern part of the United States, having its sources in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and flowing south into Massachusetts, and thence east and north-east into the Atlantic Ocean. With its largest branch it has an extreme length of about 183 m. The, Merrimac proper is formed at Franklin, New Hampshire, by the junction of the Pemigewasset and Winnepesaukee rivers. The former is the larger branch and rises in the White Mountains in Grafton county; the latter is the outlet of Lake Winnepesaukee. The valley of the Merrimac was formed before the glacial period and was filled with drift as the ice retreated; subsequently the high flood plain thus formed has been trenched, terraces have been formed, and at different places, where the new channel did not conform to the pre-glacial channel, the river has come upon buried ledges, relatively much more resistant than the drift below, and waterfalls have thus resulted. The river falls 269 ft. in a distance of 110 m. from Franklin to its mouth. The greater part of the total fall is at six points, and at each of four of these is a city which owes its importance in great measure to the water-power thus provided, Lowell and Lawrence in Massachusetts, and Manchester and Concord in New Hampshire; at Lowell there is a fall of 30 ft. (Pawtucket Falls), and at Manchester there is a fall of 55 ft. (Amoskeag Falls). The region drained by the river is 4553 sq. m. in extent, and contains a number of lakes, which together with some artificial reservoirs serve as a storage system. On the navigable portion of the river, which extends 171/2 m. above its mouth, are the cities of Newburyport, near its mouth, and Haverhill, at the head of navigation. In 1899–1908 the Federal government dredged a channel from Newburyport to Haverhill (14·5 m.) 7 ft. deep and 150 ft. wide at mean low water; vessels having a draft of 12·5 ft. could then pass over the outer bar of Newburyport.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Merseburg

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​MERSEBURG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Saxony, on the river Saale, 10 m. by rail S. of Halle and 15 m. W. of Leipzig. Pop. (1905), 20,024. It consists of a quaint and irregularly built old town, a new quarter, and two extensive suburbs, Altenburg and Neumarkt. The cathedral, which was restored in 1884–1886, has a choir, a crypt and two towers of the 11th, a transept of the 13th and a late Gothic nave of the 16th century. Among its numerous monuments is one to Rudolph of Swabia, the rival of the emperor Henry IV. It contains ​a great organ dating from the 17th century. Near the cathedral is the Gothic palace, formerly the residence of the bishops of Merseburg, and now used as public offices. The town hall and the Ständehaus, where the meetings of the provincial estates were held, are also noteworthy buildings. The industries include the manufacture of machinery, paper and celluloid, and tanning and brewing.
Merseburg is one of the oldest towns in Germany. From 968 until the Reformation, it was the seat of a bishop, and in addition to being for a time the residence of the margraves of Meissen, it was a favourite residence of the German kings during the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries. Fifteen diets were held here during the middle ages, when its fairs enjoyed the importance which was afterwards transferred to those of Leipzig. The town suffered severely during the Peasants’ War and also during the Thirty Years’ War. From 1657 to 1738 it was the residence of the dukes of Saxe-Merseburg.
See E. Hoffmann, Historische Nachrichten aus Alt-Merseburg (Merseburg, 1903).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Merope

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​MEROPE, the name of several figures in Greek mythology. The most important of them are the following: (1) The daughter of Cypselus, king of Arcadia, and wife of Cresphontes, ruler of Messenia. During an insurrection Cresphontes and two of his sons were murdered and the throne seized by Polyphontes, who forced Merope to marry him. A third son, Aepytus, contrived to escape, and, subsequently returning to Messenia, put Polyphontes to death and recovered his father’s kingdom (Apollodorus ii. 8, 5; Pausanias iv. 3, 6). The fortunes of Merope have furnished the subject of tragedies by Euripides (Cresphontes, not extant), Voltaire, Maffei and Matthew Arnold. (2) The daughter of Atlas and wife of Sisyphus. She was one of the seven Pleiades, but remained invisible, hiding her light for shame at having become the wife of a mortal (Apollodorus i. 9, 3; iii. 10, 1; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 175).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Merrill

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​MERRILL, a city and the county-seat of Lincoln county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., 185 m. N.W. of Milwaukee, on both sides of the Wisconsin river. Pop. (1910 census), 8689. It is served by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul-railroad. The city is situated about 1270 ft. above the sea and has an invigorating climate. Brook trout and various kinds of game, including deer, abound in the vicinity. Grandfather Falls and the Delles of the Prairie river are picturesque places near the city, and furnish good water-power. The principal public building is the Lincoln county court house, and the city contains the T. B. Scott free library, a fine high-school, and the Ravn hospital, a private institution. Riverside Park is maintained by a corporation, and a park along the Prairie river is owned and maintained by the city. Merrill is an important hardwood lumber market, and its principal industry is the manufacture of lumber and lumber products. The manufacture of paper and paper pulp and of lathes is also important. In 1905 the factory products were valued at $3,260,638 There are granite quarries and brickyards in the vicinity. Merrill was settled in 1875, incorporated as a village in 1880, and chartered as a city in 1883.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mersenne, Marin

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​MERSENNE, MARIN (1588–1648), French philosopher and mathematician, was born of peasant parents near Oizé (Sarthe) on the 8th of September 1588, and died in Paris on the 1st of September 1648. He was educated at the Jesuit College of La Flèche, where he was a fellow-pupil and friend of Descartes. In 1611 he joined the Minim Friars, and devoted himself to philosophic teaching in various convent schools. He settled eventually in Paris in 1620 at the convent of L’Annonciade. For the next four years he devoted himself entirely to philosophic and theological writing, and published Quaestions celeberrimae in Genesim (1623); L’Impiété des déistes (1624); La Vérité des sciences (1624). These works are characterized by wide scholarship and the narrowest theological orthodoxy. His greatest service to philosophy was his enthusiastic defence of Descartes, whose agent he was in Paris and whom he visited in exile in Holland. He submitted to various eminent Parisian thinkers a manuscript copy of the Meditations, and defended its orthodoxy against numerous clerical critics. In later life, he gave up speculative thought and turned to scientific research, especially in mathematics, physics and astronomy. Of his works in this connexion the best known is L’Harmonie universelle (1636), dealing with the theory of music and musical instruments.
Among his other works are: Euclidis elementorum libri, &c. (Paris, 1626); Universae geometriae synopsis (1644); Les Mécaniques de Galilée (Paris, 1634); Questions inouïes ou récréations des savants (1634); Questions théologiques, physiques, &c. (1634); Nouvelles découvertes de Galilée (1639); Cogitata physico-mathematica (1644).
See Baillet, Vie de Descartes (1691); Poté, Éloge de Mersenne (1816).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Merritt, Wesley

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​MERRITT, WESLEY (1836–), American soldier, was born in New York City on the 16th of June 1836. He graduated at West Point in 1860, and Was assigned to the cavalry service. He served in Utah (1861) and in the defences of Washington (1861–62); learnt the field duties of his arm as aide (1862) to General Philip St George Cooke, who then commanded the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac; became brigadier-general, United States Volunteers, in June 1863; and in September 1863 was placed in command of a brigade of regular cavalry in the Army of the Potomac. He won great distinction in the Virginian campaigns of 1864–65 and in Sheridan’s Valley campaign, being brevetted major-general of volunteers for his conduct at Winchester and Fisher’s Hill, and brigadier-general of the regular army for his services at Five Forks. In the final campaign about Richmond he did such good service in command of a cavalry division that he was brevetted major-general in the regular army and was promoted major-general of volunteers. With two other Federal commissioners he arranged with the Confederate commanders for the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was mustered out of the Volunteer Service in February 1866, and in July became lieutenant-colonel of the 9th cavalry in the regular army, being promoted gradually to major-general (1895). He served in the Big Horn and Yellowstone Indian campaigns (1876) and in the expedition to relieve the command of Major Thornburgh, who was killed in 1879 by the Utes;, was superintendent at West Point (1882–87); and commanded the military department of Missouri in 1887–95, and that of the Atlantic in 1897–98. He was assigned in May 1898 to the command of the United States forces that were sent to the Philippines, after Admiral Dewey’s victory; stormed Manila on the 13th of August; and was military governor of the islands until the 30th of August, when he left Manila for Paris to join the peace commission. From 1899. until his retirement from active service in June 1900 he commanded the Department of the East.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mersen, Treaty of

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​MERSEN (Meerssen), TREATY OF, a treaty concluded on the 8th of August 870 at Mersen, in Holland, between Charles the Bald and his half-brother, Louis the German, by which the kingdom of their nephew Lothair II. (d. 869) was divided between them. Charles received a portion of the kingdom of Lothair afterwards called Lorraine, extending from the mouths of the Rhine to Toul, together with the town of Besançon, the Lyonnais, the Viennais, the Vivarais, and the Uzège, i.e. the lands acquired by Lothair II. in 863 at the, death of his brother Charles of Provence; while Louis had the cities of Cologne, Trier and Metz, together with Alsace, the Escuens, and the Varais, i.e. the greater part of the diocese of Besançon. The boundary between the two realms was marked approximately by the valleys of the Meuse and Moselle and by the Jura. Great importance has been attached to the determination of this frontier by some historians, who consider that it coincided with the dividing line between the Teutonic and Romance races and languages; but nothing is known of the bases upon which the negotiations were effected, and the situation created by this treaty came to an end in 879.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Meroe

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​MEROE, the general name (as Island of Meroe) for the region bounded on three sides by the Nile (from Atbara to Khartum), the Atbara, and the Blue Nile; and the special name of an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile, 877 m. from Wadi Halfa by river, and 554 by the route across the desert, near the site of which is a group of villages called Bakarawiya. The site of the city is marked by over two hundred pyramids in three groups, of which many are in ruinous condition. After these ruins had been described by several travellers, among whom F. Cailliaud (Voyage à Méroé, Paris, 1826–1828) deserves special mention, some excavations were executed on a small scale in 1834 by G. Ferlini (Cenno sugli scavi operati nella Nubia e catalogo degli oggetti ritrovati, Bologna, 1837), who discovered (or professed to discover) various antiquities, chiefly in the form of jewelry, now in the museums of Berlin and. Munich. The ruins were examined in 1844 by C. R. Lepsius, who brought many plans, sketches and copies, besides actual antiquities, to Berlin. Further excavations were carried on by E. W. Budge in the years 1902 and 1905, the results of which are recorded in his work, The Egyptian Sūdān: its History and Monuments (London, 1907). Troops were furnished by Sir Reginald Wingate, governor of the Sudan, who made paths to and between the pyramids, and sank shafts, &c. It was found that the pyramids were regularly built over sepulchral chambers, containing the remains of bodies either burned or buried Without being mummified. The most interesting objects found were the reliefs on the chapel walls, already described by Lepsius, and containing the names with representations of queens and some kings, with some chapters of the Book of the Dead; some steles with inscriptions in the Meroitic language, and some vessels of metal and earthenware. The best of the reliefs were taken down stone by stone in 1905, and set up partly in the British Museum and partly in the museum at Khartum. In 1910, in consequence of a, report by Professor Sayce, excavations were commenced in the mounds of the town and the necropolis by J. Garstang on behalf of the university of Liverpool, and the ruins of a palace and several temples were discovered, built by the Meroite kings. (See further Ethiopia.)
Meroe was probably also an alternative name for the city, of Napata, the ancient capital of Ethiopia, built at the foot of Jebel Barkal. The site of Napata is indicated by the villages of Sanam Abu Dom on the left bank of the Nile and Old Merawi on the right bank of the river. New Merawi, 1 m. east of Sanam Abu Dom and on the same side of the river, was founded by the, Sudan government in 1905 and made the capital of the mudiria of Dongola.  (D. S. M.*)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Merriman, Henry Seton

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​MERRIMAN, HENRY SETON (d. 1903), the pen-name of Hugh Stowell Scott, English novelist. He Was a member of the firm of Henry Scott & Sons, and was for some years an underwriter at Lloyd’s. His literary career began in 1889 with The Phantom Future, and he made his first decided hit with his Russian story, The Sowers (1896), which was followed by many other well-constructed novels remarkable for excellence of plot and literary handling. The author was an enthusiastic traveller, many of his journeys being undertaken with his friend Stanley Weyman. He was about forty when he died at Melton, near Ipswich, on the 19th of November 1903. Among his most successful books were Roden’s Corner (1898); The Isle of Unrest (1899); In Kedar’s Tents (1897); The Velvet Glove (1901); The Vultures (1902); Barlasch of the Guard (1903); and The Last Hope (1904).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sapan Wood

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​SAPAN WOOD (Malay sapang), a soluble red dyewood from a tree belonging to the leguminous genus Caesalpinia, a native of tropical Asia and the Indian Archipelago. The wood is somewhat lighter in colour than Brazil wood and its other allies, but the same tinctorial principle, brazilin, appears to be common to all.