Chapter 17 of 47 · 3839 words · ~19 min read

Part 17

COLE, SIR HENRY (1808-1882), English civil servant, was born at Bath on the 15th of July 1808, and was the son of an officer in the army. At the age of fifteen he became clerk to Sir Francis Palgrave, then a subordinate officer in the record office, and, helped by Charles Buller, to whom he had been introduced by Thomas Love Peacock, and who became chairman of a royal commission for inquiry into the condition of the public records, worked his way up until he became an assistant keeper. He largely assisted in influencing public opinion in support of Sir Rowland Hill's reforms at the post office. A connexion with the Society of Arts caused him to drift gradually out of the record office: he was a leading member of the commission that organized the Great Exhibition of 1851, and upon the conclusion of its labours was made secretary to the School of Design, which by a series of transformations became in 1853 the Department of Science and Art. Under its auspices the South Kensington (now Victoria and Albert) Museum was founded in 1855 upon land purchased out of the surplus of the exhibition, and Cole practically became its director, retiring in 1873. His proceedings were frequently criticized, but the museum owes much to his energy. Indefatigable, genial and masterful, he drove everything before him, and by all sorts of schemes and devices built up a great institution, whose variety and inequality of composition seemed imaged in the anomalous structure in which it was temporarily housed. He also, though to the financial disappointment of many, conferred a great benefit upon the metropolis by originating the scheme for the erection of the Royal Albert Hall. He was active in founding the national training schools for cookery and music, the latter the germ of the Royal College of Music. He edited the works of his benefactor Peacock; and was in his younger days largely connected with the press, and the author of many useful topographical handbooks published under the pseudonym of "Felix Summerly." He died on the 18th of April 1882.

COLE, THOMAS (1801-1848), American landscape painter, was born at Bolton-le-Moors, England, on the 1st of February 1801. In 1819 the family emigrated to America, settling first in Philadelphia and then at Steubenville, Ohio, where Cole learned the rudiments of his profession from a wandering portrait painter named Stein. He went about the country painting portraits, but with little financial success. Removing to New York (1825), he displayed some landscapes in the window of an eating-house, where they attracted the attention of the painter Colonel Trumbull, who sought him out, bought one of his canvases, and found him patrons. From this time Cole was prosperous. He is best remembered by a series of pictures consisting of four canvases representing "The Voyage of Life," and another series of five canvases representing "The Course of Empire," the latter now in the gallery of the New York Historical Society. They were allegories, in the taste of the day, and became exceedingly popular, being reproduced in engravings with great success. The work, however, was meretricious, the sentiment false, artificial and conventional, and the artist's genuine fame must rest on his landscapes, which, though thin in the painting, hard in the handling, and not infrequently painful in detail, were at least earnest endeavours to portray the world out of doors as it appeared to the painter; their failings were the result of Cole's environment and training. He had an influence on his time and his fellows which was considerable, and with Durand he may be said to have founded the early school of American landscape painters. Cole spent the years 1829-1832 and 1841-1842 abroad, mainly in Italy, and at Florence lived with the sculptor Greenough. After 1827 he had a studio in the Catskills which furnished the subjects of some of his canvases, and he died at Catskill, New York, on the 11th of February 1848. His pictures are in many public and private collections. His "Expulsion from Eden" is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

COLE, TIMOTHY (1852- ), American wood engraver, was born in London, England, in 1852, his family emigrating to the United States in 1858. He established himself in Chicago, where in the great fire of 1871 he lost everything he possessed. In 1875 he removed to New York, finding work on the _Century_ (then _Scribner's_) magazine. He immediately attracted attention by his unusual facility and his sympathetic interpretation of illustrations and pictures, and his publishers sent him abroad in 1883 to engrave a set of blocks after the old masters in the European galleries. These achieved for him a brilliant success. His reproductions of Italian, Dutch, Flemish and English pictures were published in book form with appreciative notes by the engraver himself. Though the advent of new mechanical processes had rendered wood engraving almost a lost art and left practically no demand for the work of such craftsmen, Mr Cole was thus enabled to continue his work, and became one of the foremost contemporary masters of wood engraving. He received a medal of the first class at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, and the only grand prize given for wood engraving at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St Louis, Missouri, in 1904.

COLE, VICAT (1833-1893), English painter, born at Portsmouth on the 17th of April 1833, was the son of the landscape painter, George Cole, and in his practice followed his father's lead with marked success. He exhibited at the British Institution at the age of nineteen, and was first represented at the Royal Academy in 1853. His election as an associate of this institution took place in 1870, and he became an Academician ten years later. He died in London on the 6th of April 1893. The wide popularity of his work was due partly to the simple directness of his technical method, and partly to his habitual choice of attractive material. Most of his subjects were found in the counties of Surrey and Sussex, and along the banks of the Thames. One of his largest pictures, "The Pool of London," was bought by the Chantrey Fund Trustees in 1888, and is now in the Tate Gallery.

See Robert Chignell, _The Life and Paintings of Vicat Cole, R.A._ (London, 1899).

COLEBROOKE, HENRY THOMAS (1765-1837), English Orientalist, the third son of Sir George Colebrooke, 2nd baronet, was born in London on the 15th of June 1765. He was educated at home; and when only fifteen he had made considerable attainments in classics and mathematics. From the age of twelve to sixteen he resided in France, and in 1782 was appointed to a writership in India. About a year after his arrival there he was placed in the board of accounts in Calcutta; and three years later he was removed to a situation in the revenue department at Tirhut. In 1789 he was removed to Purneah, where he investigated the resources of that part of the country, and published his _Remarks on the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal_, privately printed in 1795, in which he advocated free trade between Great Britain and India. After eleven years' residence in India, Colebrooke began the study of Sanskrit; and to him was confided the translation of the great _Digest of Hindu Laws_, which had been left unfinished by Sir William Jones. He translated the two treatises _Mitacshara_ and _Dayabhaga_ under the title _Law of Inheritance_. He was sent to Nagpur in 1799 on a special mission, and on his return was made a judge of the new court of appeal, over which he afterwards presided. In 1805 Lord Wellesley appointed him professor of Hindu Law and Sanskrit at the college of Fort William. During his residence at Calcutta he wrote his _Sanskrit Grammar_ (1805), some papers on the religious ceremonies of the Hindus, and his _Essay on the Vedas_ (1805), for a long time the standard work on the subject. He became member of council in 1807 and returned to England seven years later. He died on the 18th of March 1837. He was a director of the Asiatic Society, and many of the most valuable papers in the society's _Transactions_ were communicated by him.

His life was written by his son, Sir T. E. Colebrooke, in 1873.

COLEMANITE, a hydrous calcium borate, Ca2B6O11 + 5H2O, found in California as brilliant monoclinic crystals. It contains 50.9% of boron trioxide, and is an important source of commercial borates and boracic acid. Beautifully developed crystals, up to 2 or 3 in. in length, encrust cavities in compact, white colemanite; they are colourless and transparent, and the brilliant lustre of their faces is vitreous to adamantine in character. There is a perfect cleavage parallel to the plane of symmetry of the crystals. Hardness 4-4½; specific gravity 2.42. The mineral was first discovered in 1882 in Death Valley, Inyo county, California, and in the following year it was found in greater abundance near Daggett in San Bernardino county, forming with other borates and borosilicates a bed in sedimentary strata of sandstones and clays; in more recent years very large masses have been found and worked in these localities, and also in Los Angeles county (see Special Report, 1905, of U.S. Census Bureau on _Mines and Quarries_; and _Mineral Resources of the U.S._, 1907).

Priceite and pandermite are hydrous calcium borates with very nearly the same composition as colemanite, and they may really be only impure forms of this species. They are massive white minerals, the former friable and chalk-like, and the latter firm and compact in texture. Priceite occurs near Chetco in Curry county, Oregon, where it forms layers between a bed of slate and one of tough blue steatite; embedded in the steatite are rounded masses of priceite varying in size from that of a pea to masses weighing 200 lb. Pandermite comes from Asia Minor, and is shipped from the port of Panderma on the Sea of Marmora: it occurs as large nodules, up to a ton in weight, beneath a thick bed of gypsum.

Another borate of commercial importance found abundantly in the Californian deposits is ulexite, also known as boronatrocalcite or "cotton-ball," a hydrous calcium and sodium borate, CaNaB5O9 + 8H2O, which forms rounded masses consisting of a loose aggregate of fine fibres. It is the principal species in the borate deposits in the Atacama region of South America. (L. J. S.)

COLENSO, JOHN WILLIAM (1814-1883), English bishop of Natal, was born at St Austell, Cornwall, on the 24th of January 1814. His family were in embarrassed circumstances, and he was indebted to relatives for the means of university education. In 1836 he was second wrangler and Smith's prizeman at Cambridge, and in 1837 he became fellow of St John's. Two years later he went to Harrow as mathematical tutor, but the step proved an unfortunate one. The school was just then at the lowest ebb, and Colenso not only had few pupils, but lost most of his property by a fire. He went back to Cambridge, and in a short time paid off heavy debts by diligent tutoring and the proceeds of his series of manuals of algebra (1841) and arithmetic (1843), which were adopted all over England. In 1846 he became rector of Forncett St Mary, Norfolk, and in 1853 he was appointed bishop of Natal. He at once devoted himself to acquiring the Zulu language, of which he compiled a grammar and a dictionary, and into which he translated the New Testament and other portions of Scripture. He had already given evidence, in a volume of sermons dedicated to Maurice, that he was not satisfied with the traditional views about the Bible. The puzzling questions put to him by the Zulus strengthened him in this attitude and led him to make a critical examination of the Pentateuch. His conclusions, positive and negative, were published in a series of treatises on the Pentateuch, extending from 1862 to 1879, and, being in advance of his time, were naturally disputed in England with a fervour of conviction equal to his own. On the continent they attracted the notice of Abraham Kuenen, and furthered that scholar's investigations.

While the controversy raged in England, the South African bishops, whose suspicions Colenso had already incurred by the liberality of his views respecting polygamy among native converts and by a commentary upon the Epistle to the Romans (1861), in which he combated the doctrine of eternal punishment, met in conclave to condemn him, and pronounced his deposition (December 1863). Colenso, who had refused to appear before their tribunal otherwise than as sending a protest by proxy, appealed to the privy council, which pronounced that the metropolitan of Cape Town (Robert Gray) had no coercive jurisdiction and no authority to interfere with the bishop of Natal. No decision, therefore, was given upon the merits of the case. His adversaries, though unable to obtain his condemnation, succeeded in causing him to be generally inhibited from preaching in England, and Bishop Gray not only excommunicated him but consecrated a rival bishop for Natal (W. K. Macrorie), who, however, took his title from Maritzburg. The contributions of the missionary societies were withdrawn, but an attempt to deprive him of his episcopal income was frustrated by a decision of the courts. Colenso, encouraged by a handsome testimonial raised in England, to which many clergymen subscribed, returned to his diocese, and devoted the latter years of his life to further labours as a biblical commentator and translator. He also championed the cause of the natives against Boer oppression and official encroachments, a course by which he made more enemies among the colonists than he had ever made among the clergy. He died at Durban on the 20th of June 1883. His daughter Frances Ellen Colenso (1840-1887) published two books on the relations of the Zulus to the British (1880 and 1885), taking a pro-Zulu view; and an elder daughter, Harriette E. Colenso (b. 1847), became prominent as an advocate of the natives in opposition to their treatment by Natal, especially in the case of Dinizulu in 1888-1889 and in 1908-1909.

See his _Life_ by Sir G. W. Cox (2 vols., London, 1888).

COLENSO, a village of Natal on the right or south bank of the Tugela river, 16 m. by rail south by east of Ladysmith. It was the scene of an

## action fought on the 15th of December 1899 between the British forces

under Sir Redvers Buller and the Boers, in which the former were repulsed. (See LADYSMITH.)

COLEOPTERA, a term used in zoological classification for the true beetles which form one of the best-marked and most natural of the orders into which the class Hexapoda (or Insecta) has been divided. For the relationship of the Coleoptera to other orders of insects see HEXAPODA. The name (Gr. [Greek: koleos], a sheath, and [Greek: ptera], wings) was first used by Aristotle, who noticed the firm protective sheaths, serving as coverings for the hind-wings which alone are used for flight, without recognizing their correspondence with the fore-wings of other insects.

These firm fore-wings, or elytra (fig. 1, A), are usually convex above, with straight hind margins (_dorsa_); when the elytra are closed, the two hind margins come together along the mid-dorsal line of the body, forming a _suture_. In many beetles the hind-wings are reduced to mere vestiges useless for flight, or are altogether absent, and in such cases the two elytra are often fused together at the suture; thus organs originally intended for flight have been transformed into an armour-like covering for the beetle's hind-body. In correlation with their heavy build and the frequent loss of the power of flight, many beetles are terrestrial rather than aerial in habit, though a large proportion of the order can fly well.

Aristotle's term was adopted by Linnaeus (1758), and has been universally used by zoologists. The identification of the elytra of beetles with the fore-wings of other insects has indeed been questioned (1880) by F. Meinert, who endeavoured to compare them with the tegulae of Hymenoptera, but the older view was securely established by the demonstration in pupal elytra by J. G. Needham (1898) and W. L. Tower (1903), of nervures similar to those of the hind-wing, and by the proof that the small membranous structures present beneath the elytra of certain beetles, believed by Meinert to represent the whole of the true fore-wings, are in reality only the alulae.

_Structure._--Besides the conspicuous character of the elytra, beetles are distinguished by the adaptation of the jaws for biting, the mandibles (fig. 1, Bb) being powerful, and the first pair of maxillae (fig. 1, Bc) usually typical in form. The maxillae of the second pair (fig. 1, Bd) are very intimately fused together to form what is called the "lower lip" or labium, a firm transverse plate representing the fused basal portions of the maxillae, which may carry a small median "ligula," representing apparently the fused inner maxillary lobes, a pair of paraglossae (outer maxillary lobes), and a pair of palps. The feelers of beetles differ greatly in the different families (cf. figs. 2b, 9b and 26b, c); the number of segments is usually eleven, but may vary from two to more than twenty.

The head is extended from behind forwards, so that the crown (epicranium) is large, while the face (clypeus) is small. The chin (gula) is a very characteristic sclerite in beetles, absent only in a few families, such as the weevils. There is usually a distinct labrum (fig. 1, Ba).

The prothorax is large and "free," i.e. readily movable on the mesothorax, an arrangement usual among insects with the power of rapid running. The tergite of the prothorax (pronotum) is prominent in all beetles, reaching back to the bases of the elytra and forming a substantial shield for the front part of the body. The tergal regions of the mesothorax and of the metathorax are hidden under the pronotum and the elytra when the latter are closed, except that the mesothoracic scutellum is often visible--a small triangular or semicircular plate between the bases of the elytra (fig. 1, A). The ventral region of the thoracic skeleton is complex, each segment usually possessing a median sternum with paired episterna (in front) and epimera (behind). The articular surfaces of the haunches (coxae) of the fore-legs are often conical or globular, so that each limb works in a ball-and-socket joint, while the hind haunches are large, displacing the ventral sclerites of the first two abdominal segments (fig. 1, C). The legs themselves (fig. 1, A) are of the usual insectan type, but in many families one, two, or even three of the five foot-segments may be reduced or absent. In beetles of aquatic habit the intermediate and hind legs are modified as swimming-organs (fig. 2, a), while in many beetles that burrow into the earth or climb about on trees the fore-legs are broadened and strengthened for digging, or lengthened and modified for clinging to branches. The hard fore-wings (elytra) are strengthened with marginal ridges, usually inflected ventrally to form epipleura which fit accurately along the edges of the abdomen. The upper surface of the elytron is sharply folded inwards at intervals, so as to give rise to a regular series of external longitudinal furrows (striae) and to form a set of supports between the two chitinous layers forming the elytron. The upper surface often shows a number of impressed dots (punctures). Along the sutural border of the elytron, the chitinous lamella forms a tubular space within which are numerous glands. The glands occur in groups, and lead into common ducts which open in several series along the suture. Sometimes the glands are found beneath the disk of the elytron, opening by pores on the surface. The hind-wings, when developed, are characteristic in form, possessing a sub-costal nervure with which the reduced radial nervure usually becomes associated. There are several curved median and cubital nervures and a single anal, but few cross nervures or areolets. The wing, when not in use, is folded both lengthwise and transversely, and doubled up beneath the elytron; to permit the transverse folding, the longitudinal nervures are interrupted.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Structure of Male Stag-Beetle (_Lucanus cervus_). A, Dorsal view; B, mouth organs; C, under side.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Water Beetles (_Dyticidae_). a, Beetle; b, head of beetle with feelers and palps; c, larva; d, pupa.]

Ten segments can be recognized--according to the studies of K. W. Verhoeff (1804-1896)--in a beetle's abdomen, but the tenth sternite is usually absent. On account of the great extension of the metathorax and the haunches of the large hind-legs, the first abdominal sternite is wanting, and the second is usually so much reduced that the foremost apparent ventral sclerite of the abdomen represents the third sternite. From this point backwards the successive abdominal segments, as far as the seventh or eighth, can be readily made out. The ninth and tenth segments are at most times retracted within the eighth. The female can protrude a long flexible tube in connexion with the eighth segment, carrying the sclerites of the ninth at its extremity, and these sclerites may carry short hairy processes--the stylets. This flexible tube is the functional ovipositor, the typical insectan ovipositor with its three pairs of processes (see HEXAPODA) being undeveloped among the Coleoptera. In male beetles, however, the two pairs of genital processes (paramera) belonging to the ninth abdominal segment are always present, though sometimes reduced. Between them is situated, sometimes asymmetrically, the prominent intromittent organ.

In the structure of the digestive system, beetles resemble most other mandibulate insects, the food-canal consisting of gullet, crop, gizzard, mid-gut or stomach, intestine and rectum. The stomach is beset throughout its length with numerous small, finger-like caecal tubes. The excretory (malpighian) tubes are few in number, either four or six. Many beetles have, in connexion with the anus, glands which secrete a repellent acid fluid, serving as a defence for the insect when attacked. The "bombardier" ground beetles (fig. 5) have this habit. Oil-beetles (figs. 23 and 24) and ladybirds (fig. 32) defend themselves by ejecting drops of fluid from the knee-joints. The nervous system is remarkably concentrated in some beetles, the abdominal ganglia showing a tendency to become shifted forward and crowded together, and in certain chafers all the thoracic and abdominal ganglia are fused into a single nerve-centre situated in the thorax,--a degree of specialization only matched in the insectan class among the Hemiptera and some muscid flies.

_Development._--The embryonic development (see HEXAPODA) has been carefully studied in several genera of beetles. As regards growth after hatching, all beetles undergo a "complete" metamorphosis, the wing-rudiments developing beneath the cuticle throughout the larval stages, and a resting pupal stage intervening between the last larval instar[1] and the imago. The coleopterous pupa (figs. 2d, 3c) is always "free," the legs, wings and other appendages not being fixed to the body as in the pupa of a moth, and the likeness of pupa to perfect insect is very close.