OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cathcart, Sir George

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​CATHCART, SIR GEORGE (1794–1854), English soldier, third son of the 1st Earl Cathcart, was born in London on the 12th of May 1794. He was educated at Eton and Edinburgh University. In 1810 he entered the army, and two years later accompanied his father to Russia as aide-de-camp. With him he joined the Russian headquarters in March 1813; and he was present at all the great battles of that year in Germany, and of the following year in France, and also at the taking of Paris. The fruits of his careful observation and critical study of these operations appeared in the Commentaries on the war in Russia and Germany 1812–1813, a plain soldier-like history, which he published in 1850. After the peace of 1814 he accompanied his father to the congress of Vienna. He was present at Quatre Bras and at Waterloo, as an aide-de-camp to the duke of Wellington, and remained on the staff till the army of occupation quitted France. ​Reappointed almost immediately, he accompanied the duke to the congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle and Verona, and in 1826 to Prussia. Promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1826, he was placed on half-pay in 1834. He was recalled to active service in 1838, and sent as commander of the King’s Dragoon Guards to Canada, where he played an important part in suppressing the rebellion and pacifying the country. In 1844 he returned to England, and two years later was appointed deputy-lieutenant of the Tower, a post which he held up to the time of his promotion to major-general in 1851. In March 1852 he succeeded Sir Harry Smith as governor and commander-in-chief at the Cape, and brought the Kaffir war, then in progress, to a successful conclusion. He promulgated the first constitution of Cape Colony, and conducted operations against the Basuto. Cathcart was made a K.C.B. and received the thanks of both Houses for his services (1853). In December 1853 he was made adjutant-general of the army, but never entered upon his duties, being sent out to the Crimean War as soon as he arrived in England. He was even given a dormant commission entitling him to the chief command in case of accident to Lord Raglan, and the highest hopes were fixed on him as a scientific and experienced soldier. But these hopes were not to be fulfilled; for he fell at the battle of Inkerman (November 5, 1854). His remains, with those of other officers, were buried on Cathcart’s Hill. Sir George Cathcart married in 1824 Lady Georgiana Greville, who survived him, and by whom he had a family.
See Colburn’s United Service Magazine, January 1855; Correspondence of the Hon. Sir George Cathcart relative to Kaffraria (1856); A. W. Kinglake’s Invasion of the Crimea, vol. v.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agriculture

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​AGRICULTURE (from Lat. ager, field, and colere, to cultivate), the science, art and industry of utilizing the soil so as to produce the means of human subsistence, embracing in its widest sense the rearing of live-stock as well as the raising of crops. The history of agriculture is the history of man in his most primitive, and most permanent aspect. Hence the nations of antiquity ascribed to it a divine origin; Brahma in Hindustan, Isis in Egypt, Demeter in Greece, and Ceres in Italy, were its founders. The simplest form of agriculture is that in which crops are raised from one patch of ground till it is exhausted, when it is allowed to go wild and abandoned for another. This “extensive” husbandry is found in combination with a nomadic or semi-nomadic and pastoral organization, such as that of the German tribes described by Caesar and Tacitus (see especially Germania, 26). The discovery of the uses of the bare fallow and of manure, by making it possible to raise crops from the same area for an indefinite period, marks a stage of progress. This “intensive” culture in a more or less developed form was practised by the great nations of antiquity, and little decided advance was made till after the middle ages. The introduction of new plants, which made it possible to dispense with the bare fallow, and still later the application to husbandry of scientific discoveries as to soils, plant constituents and manures, brought about a revolution in farming. But the progress of husbandry, evidenced by the production of larger and better crops with more certainty, is due to that rationalizing of agricultural practices which is the work of modern times. What before was done in the light of experience is nowadays done in the light of knowledge. Even the earliest forms of intensive cultivation demand the practice of the fundamental processes of husbandry—ploughing, manuring, sowing, weeding, reaping. It is the improvements in methods, implements and materials, brought about by the application of science, that distinguish the husbandry of the 20th century from that of medieval and ancient times.

## Sections

* Ancient Husbandry
* History of English Agriculture
* Acreage and Yields of British Crops
* The Produce of British Crops
* Crops and Cropping
* The Rotation of Crops
* British Live Stock
* British Imports of Live Animals and Meat
* Sale of Cattle by Live Weight
* Food-values and Early Maturity
* Breed Societies
* The Maintenance of the Health of Live Stock
* The Diseases of Animals
* The Trade in Live Stock between Ireland and Great Britain
* Exports of Animals from the United Kingdom
* Implements and Machinery
* Agricultural Population and Wages
* Agricultural Education
* Agriculture in the United States
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agriculture/Agricultural Population and Wages

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Agricultural Population and Wages.
The last half of the 19th century witnessed a remarkable diminution of the British rural population. The decrease has assumed serious proportions since 1871, as before that date the supply of rural labour exceeded the demand. A large number of agricultural labourers were thus only in partial employment, and their withdrawal from the land was of minor importance as compared with the shrinkage in the number of those permanently employed. The following tables indicate the extent of rural depopulation:—
Number of “Persons engaged in Agriculture” in the United Kingdom, 1851–1901. :
| 1851. | 1861. | 1871. | 1881. | 1891. | 1901. |
| 3,453,500 | 3,080,500 | 2,744,000 | 2,573,900 | 2,394,500 | 2,262,600 |
The number of “agricultural labourers and shepherds,” which affords a more precise index, declined in a still more marked degree.
| 1851. | 1861. | 1871. | 1881. | 1891. | 1901. |
| 1,110,311 | 1,098,261 | 923,332 | 830,452 | 756,557 | 609,105 |
The decrease in the demand for labour is attributable chiefly to the reduction of the cultivated area and the laying down to pasture of land once under the plough, and to the increasing use of agricultural machinery. It may, however, be noticed that the period 1850–1903 was marked by a steady increase of the cash wages of the farm labourer, as indicated in the following table from the Report on the Earnings of Agricultural Labourers issued by the Board of Trade in 1905.
Average Weekly Cash Wages of ordinary Agricultural Labourers employed on certain Farms in England and Wales.
| Year. | England and Wales,  69 farms. | England and Wales,  69 farms. | Eastern counties,  12 farms. | Eastern counties,  12 farms. |
| | s. | d. | s. | d. |
| 1850 | 9 | 31/2 | 8 | 8 |
| 1855 | 10 | 111/2 | 11 | 5 |
| 1860 | 10 | 11 | 10 | 8 |
| 1865 | 11 | 3 | 10 | 5 |
| 1870 | 11 | 101/2 | 11 | 11/2 |
| 1875 | 13 | 7 | 12 | 111/2 |
| 1880 | 13 | 21/2 | 12 | 1 |
| 1885 | 13 | 1 | 11 | 5 |
| 1890 | 13 | 01/2 | 11 | 01/2 |
| 1895 | 13 | 21/2 | 11 | 0 |
| 1900 | 14 | 51/2 | 13 | 11/2 |
| 1903 | 14 | 7 | 13 | 21/2 |
(See also Allotments and Small Holdings.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Agricultural Gangs

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​AGRICULTURAL GANGS, groups of women, girls and boys organized by an independent gang-master, under whose supervision they execute agricultural piece-work for farmers in certain parts of England. They are sometimes called “public gangs” to distinguish them from “private gangs” consisting of workers engaged by the farmer himself, and undertaking work solely for him, under his own supervision or under that of one of his men. The system was for long prevalent in the counties of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and is still to be found in a much modified form in the fen district. The practice dates from the latter years of the reign of George III., when the low-lying, marshy lands surrounding the basin of the Wash were being rapidly drained and converted into rich alluvial districts. The unreformed condition of the poor-law, under which the support of the poor fell upon each individual parish, instead of a union of parishes, made landlords reluctant to erect cottages on the reclaimed land for the benefit of their tenants. Labour had to be obtained for the cultivation of these new lands, and that of women, girls and boys, being cheaper than the labour of men, was consequently very largely employed. The tendency to moral and physical ruin which resulted from this nomadic life was so great that an inquiry into the condition of agricultural child-labour was included in the reference to the commission on child-labour appointed in 1862, and the results were so startling that the Agricultural Gangs Act was passed in 1867, forbidding the employment of any child under eight years old, and of any female under a male gangmaster unless a female licensed to act as gang-mistress were also ​present. Gang-masters must be licensed by two justices, and may not hold a liquor license. The distance to be traversed on foot is fixed by the justices, and the licenses must be renewed every six months. Later legislation made more stringent the regulations under which children are employed in agricultural gangs. By the Elementary Education Act 1876, repealing and re-enacting the principal provisions of the Agricultural (Children) Act 1873, no child shall be employed under the age of eleven years, and none between eleven years and thirteen years before the child has obtained a certificate of having reached the standard of education fixed by a by-law in force in the district.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cobb, Howell

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​COBB, HOWELL (1815–1868), American political leader, was born at Cherry Hill, Jefferson county, Georgia, on the 7th of September 1815. He graduated from Franklin College (University of Georgia) in 1834, and two years later was admitted to the bar. From 1837 to 1840 he was solicitor-general for the western circuit of his state; from 1843 to 1851 and from 1855 to 1857 he was a member of the National House of Representatives, becoming Democratic leader in that body in 1847, and serving as speaker in 1849–1851; from 1851 to 1853 he was governor of his state; and from March 1857 to December 1860 he was secretary of the treasury in President Buchanan’s cabinet. He was president of the convention of the seceded states which drafted a constitution for the Confederacy. In 1861 he was appointed colonel of a regiment and two years later was made a major-general. He died in New York on the 9th of October 1868. He sided with President Jackson on the question of nullification; was an efficient supporter of President Polk’s administration during the Mexican War; and was an ardent advocate of slavery extension into the Territories, but when the Compromise of 1850 had been agreed upon he became its staunch supporter as a Union Democrat, and on that issue was elected governor of Georgia by a large majority. In 1860, however, he ceased to be a Unionist, and became a leader of the secession movement. From the close of the war until his death he vigorously opposed the Reconstruction Acts.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cobet, Carel Gabriel

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​COBET, CAREL GABRIEL (1813–1889), Dutch classical scholar, was born at Paris on the 28th of November 1813, and educated at the Hague Gymnasium and the university of Leiden. In 1836 he won a gold medal for an essay entitled Prosopographia Xenophontea, a brilliant characterization of all the persons introduced into the Memorabilia, Symposium and Oeconomicus of Xenophon. His Observationes criticae in Platonis comici reliquias (1840) revealed his remarkable critical faculty. The university conferred on him an honorary degree, and recommended him to the government for a travelling pension. The ostensible purpose of his journey was to collate the texts of Simplicius, which, however, engaged but little of his time. He contrived, however, to make a careful study of almost every Greek manuscript in the Italian libraries, and returned after five years with an intimate knowledge of palaeography. In 1846 he married, and in the same year was appointed to an extraordinary professorship at Leiden. His inaugural address, De Arte interpretandi Grammatices et Critices Fundamentis innixa, has been called the most perfect piece of Latin prose written in the 19th century. The rest of his life was passed uneventfully at Leiden. In 1856 he became joint editor of Mnemosyne, a philological review, which he soon raised to a leading position among classical journals. He contributed to it many critical notes and emendations, which were afterwards collected in book form under the titles Novae Lectiones, Variae Lectiones and Miscellanea Critica. In 1875 he took a prominent part at the Leiden Tercentenary, and impressed all his hearers by his wonderful facility in Latin improvisation. In 1884, when his health was failing, he retired as emeritus professor. He died on the 26th of October 1889. Cobet’s special weapon as a critic ​was his consummate knowledge of palaeography, but he was no less distinguished for his rare acumen and wide knowledge of classical literature. He has been blamed for rashness in the emendation of difficult passages, and for neglecting the comments of other scholars. He had little sympathy for the German critics, and maintained that the best combination was English good sense with French taste. He always expressed his obligation to the English, saying that his masters were three Richards—Bentley, Porson and Dawes.
See an appreciative obituary notice by W. G. Rutherford in the Classical Review, Dec. 1889; Hartman in Bursian’s Biographisches Jahrbuch, 1890; Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. (1908), iii. 282.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cobham

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​COBHAM, a village in the Medway parliamentary division of Kent, England, 4 m. W. of Rochester. The church (Early English and later, and restored by Sir G. G. Scott) is famous for its collection of ancient brasses, of which thirteen belonging to the years 1320–1529 commemorate members of the Brooke and Cobham families. There are some fine oak stalls and some tilting armour of the 14th century in the chancel. Cobham college, containing 20 almshouses, took the place, after the dissolution, of a college for priests founded by Sir John de Cobham in the 14th century. The present mansion of Cobham Hall is mainly Elizabethan. The picture gallery contains a fine collection of works by the great masters, Italian, Dutch and English.
The Cobham family was established here before the reign of King John. In 1313 Henry de Cobham was created Baron Cobham, but on the execution of Sir John Oldcastle (who had been summoned to parliament, jure uxoris, as Baron Cobham) in 1417, the barony lay dormant till revived in 1445 by Edward, son of Sir Thomas Brooke and Joan, grand-daughter of the 3rd Baron Cobham. In 1603 Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, was arraigned for participation in the Raleigh conspiracy, and spent the remainder of his life in prison, where he died in 1618. With him the title expired, and Cobham Hall was granted to Lodowick Stewart, duke of Lennox, passing subsequently by descent and marriage to the earls of Darnley. The present Viscount Cobham (cr. 1718) belongs to the Lyttelton family (see Lyttelton, 1st Baron).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Coble

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​COBLE (probably of Celtic origin, and connected with the root ceu or cau, hollow; cf. Welsh ceubol, a ferry-boat), a flat-bottomed fishing-boat, with deep-lying rudder and lug-sail, used off the north-east coast of England.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cobija

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​COBIJA, or Puerto La Mar (the official title given to it by the Bolivian government), a port and town of the Chilean province of Antofagasta, about 800 m. N. of Valparaiso. It is the oldest port on this part of the coast, and was for a time the principal outlet for a large mining district. It was formerly capital of the Bolivian department of Atacama and the only port possessed by Bolivia, but the seizure of that department in 1879 by Chile and the construction of the Antofagasta and Oruro railway deprived it of all importance, and its population, estimated at 6000 in 1858, has fallen to less than 500. Its harbour is comparatively safe but lacks landing facilities. Smelting for neighbouring mines is still carried on, and some of its former trade remains, but the greater part of it has gone to Tocopilla and Antofagasta. The town occupies a narrow beach between the sea and bluffs, and was greatly damaged by an earthquake and tidal wave in 1877.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cobourg

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​COBOURG, the capital of Northumberland county, Ontario, Canada, on Lake Ontario and the Grand Trunk railway; 70 m. E.N.E. of Toronto. Pop. (1901) 4239. It has a large, safe harbour, and steamboat communication with St Lawrence and Lake Ontario ports. It contains car-works, foundries, and carpet and woollen factories, and is a summer resort, especially for Americans. Victoria University, formerly situated here, was removed to Toronto in 1890.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cobbold, Thomas Spencer

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​COBBOLD, THOMAS SPENCER (1828–1886), English man of science, was born at Ipswich in 1828, a son of the Rev. Richard Cobbold (1797–1877), the author of the History of Margaret Catchpole. After graduating in medicine at Edinburgh in 1851, he was appointed lecturer on botany at St Mary’s hospital, London, in 1857, and also on zoology and comparative anatomy at Middlesex hospital in 1861. From 1868 he acted as Swiney lecturer on geology at the British Museum until 1873, when he became professor of botany at the Royal Veterinary College, afterwards filling a chair of helminthology which was specially created for him at that institution. He died in London on the 20th of March 1886. His special subject was helminthology, particularly the worms parasitic in man and animals, and as a physician he gained a considerable reputation in the diagnosis of cases depending on the presence of such organisms. His numerous writings include Entozoa (1864); Tapeworms (1866); Parasites (1879); Human Parasites (1882); and Parasites of Meat and Prepared Flesh Food (1884).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dromedary

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​DROMEDARY (from the Gr. δρομάς, δρομάδος, running, δραμεῖν, to run), a word applied to swift riding camels of either the Arabian or the Bactrian species. (See Camel.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dropwort

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​DROPWORT, in botany, the common name for a species of Spiraea, S. filipendula (nat. ord. Rosaceae), found in dry pastures. It is a perennial herb, with much divided radical leaves and an erect stem 2 to 3 ft. high bearing a loose terminal inflorescence of small white flowers, closely resembling those of the nearly allied species S. Ulmaria, or meadowsweet.
Water Dropwort, Oenanthe crocata (nat. ord. Umbelliferae), is a tall herbaceous plant growing in marshes and ditches. The stem, which springs from a cluster of thickened roots, is stout, branched, hollow and 2 to 5 ft. high; the leaves are large and pinnately divided, and the flowers are borne in a compound umbel, the long rays bearing dense partial umbels of small white flowers. The plant, which is very poisonous, is often mistaken for celery.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dromos

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​DROMORE, a market town of Co. Down, Ireland, in the west parliamentary division, on the upper Lagan, 171/2 m. S.W. of Belfast by a branch of the Great Northern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 2307. It is in the linen manufacturing district. The town is of high antiquity, and was the seat of a bishopric, which grew out of an abbey of Canons Regular attributed to St Colman in the 6th century, and was united in 1842 to Down and Connor. The town and cathedral were wholly destroyed during the insurrection of 1641, and the present church was built by Bishop Jeremy Taylor in 1661, who is buried here, as also is Thomas Percy, another famous bishop of the diocese, who laid out the fine grounds of the palace. Remains of a castle and earthworks are to be seen, together with a large rath or encampment known as the Great Fort. The town gives its name to a Roman Catholic diocese.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Droit

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​DROIT (Fr. for “right,” from Lat. directus, straight), a legal title, claim or due; a term used in English law in the phrase droits of admiralty, certain customary rights or perquisites formerly belonging to the lord high admiral, but now to the crown for public purposes and paid into the exchequer. These droits (see also Wreck) consisted of flotsam, jetsam, ligan, treasure, deodand, derelict, within the admiral’s jurisdiction; all fines, forfeitures, ransoms, recognizances and pecuniary punishments; all sturgeons, whales, porpoises, dolphins, grampuses and such large fishes; all ships and goods of the enemy coming into any creek, road or port, by durance or mistake; all ships seized at sea, salvage, &c., with the share of prizes—such shares being afterwards called “tenths,” in imitation of the French, who gave their admiral a droit de dixième. The droits of admiralty were definitely surrendered for the benefit of the public by Prince George of Denmark, when lord high admiral of England in 1702. American law does not recognize any such droits, and the disposition of captured property is regulated by various acts of Congress.
The term droit is also used in various legal connexions (for French law, see France: Law), such as the droit of angary (q.v.), the droit d’achat (right of pre-emption) in the case of contraband (q.v.), the feudal droit de bris (see Wreck), the droit de régale or ancient royal privilege of claiming the revenues and patronage of a vacant bishopric, and the feudal droits of seignory generally.