Flag
Flag names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Flag American. The early flags of the American colonies were
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
American. The early flags of the American colonies were, of course, the flags of the mother country. Various colonies had a local device. Massachusetts, for example, placed a pine tree on her flag. No general desire to change the British flag appeared until immediately preceding the American Revolution. In 1775 an American flag was adopted by Congress, combining the cross of St. George and that of St. Andrew with thirteen stripes, alternate red and white. The cross of St. Patrick did not appear in this flag because it did not appear in the British flag until 1801, the year of the union with Ireland. In his defense of Fort Jackson Colonel Moultrie hung out a large blue flag with a crescent in one corner. During the summer of 1775 a signal was devised for American cruisers. It was a white flag with a pine tree in the center. February, 1776, Colonel Jackson presented Congress an elegant standard for the use of the commander-in-chief of the American navy. This was a yellow flag with a lively rattlesnake in the middle in the attitude of striking, and the words underneath, "Don't tread on me." Various flags were used by the colonials at the battle of Bunker Hill . June 14, 1777, Congress resolved "That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternately red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation." The blue field was taken from the Covenanters' banner of Scotland, being likewise significant of the covenant into which the colonies entered against oppression. The stars were disposed in a circle, symbolizing perpetuity of union, the circle being the sign of eternity. The thirteen stripes showed, with the stars, the number of united colonies. The whole was a blending of various flags used previously. The size of the flag of the American army is 4 feet 6 inches in length, and 4 feet 4 inches in width, with 7 red stripes and 6 white ones. The first 7 stripes, 4 red and 3 white, bound the square of the blue field for the stars. With the admission of Vermont and Kentucky Congress added two stripes and two stars, and this was the flag during the War of 1812. On the 4th of April, 1818, Congress directed a return to thirteen stripes as follows: Be it enacted, etc., That from and after the 4th day of July next the flag of the United States be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be twenty stars, white, in a blue field. And be it further enacted. That on the admission of a new State into the Union, one star be added to the union of the flag; and that such addition shall take effect on the 4th of July next succeeding such admission. The first official flag of the United States was constructed at the home of Mrs. Ross, a dressmaker, in Philadelphia, under the direction of Gen. Washington and a congressional committee appointed for the purpose. The committee was for stars of six points, but Mrs. Ross suggested that the stars would be more pleasing to the eye if made with five points. Her suggestion was adopted. It is interesting to know that Mrs. Ross pleased the committee so well that she was solicited to undertake the manufacture of flags for the government, a business which descended to her children. The Old Flag House, as her home was called, stands in Arch Street. It has been converted into a flag museum. The United States navy department maintains a flag factory at the navy yard of Brooklyn. About 50,000 flags are made yearly, including some 300 patterns--domestic and foreign. The largest flag is ensign No. 1. It is 36 feet long and 19 wide. It costs $40. The president's flag is embroidered with silk worth $9 a pound. In order to be equipped to show proper courtesy to foreign ships, an American battle-ship carries forty-three different foreign flags, all made in this factory. It costs $38 to make the white elephant flag of Siam, and $51.75 to make the dragon flag of China. A full equipment of flags, ensigns, and signals includes 250 separate flags. A set is worth $2,500, and is supposed to be renewed each three years. The factory is fitted up with machinery. Including material and wages the factory costs our government $60,000 a year. The thirteen stripes are named for the thirteen original colonies in the order in which they ratified the Constitution. Named from the top, they are Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey , Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina , New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. The star representing a state may be found by counting. The first star in the upper left hand corner, where one would begin to read, shines for Delaware. The fourteenth star by count represents Vermont; the thirty-ninth, following line by line, as one would read, belongs to North Dakota. The last star, the forty-sixth, is that of Oklahoma. As new states and stars are added, a new arrangement is made, so that position changes. A few other terms should be remembered. To strike the flag is to haul it down in token of surrender; to dip is to lower slightly and run up again in honor of a passing ship or dignitary; to display at half mast is to run the flag half way up the flag pole and leave it there as a sign of mourning. By usage, a white flag signifies surrender and is also the flag of truce; a red flag, mutiny; a black flag, piracy; and a yellow flag, quarantine. See Tricolor ; Union Jack ; Crescent
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an ensign or colors; a piece of cloth, either plain or colored, and having certain figures, lines, or marks painted or worked on it; a banner indicating nationality, occupation, or intelligence. Flags of nationality are standards, ensigns, pennants (pendants), jacks. Flags of occupation indicate service, as war, merchant, dispatch, pilot, yacht-squadron, liners, etc. Flags of intelligence are of various colors and of three shapes: square, pointed, and burgee. They are used in various combinations to transmit messages according to a printed or secret code. The standard (military or naval) is a war flag. The ensign is national. The idea of standards originated with the Egyptians, at an early age. The Crusaders added the cross to their banners. The union of the three crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, marks, first the union of England and Scotland into the kingdom of Great Britain; and, then, this kingdom with Ireland. This is termed the Great Union Flag of Great Britain, and was brought by the colonists to America. When the 13 colonies began to feel the pressure of British rule they placed upon their banners a rattlesnake, cut in 13 pieces, representing the 13 colonies, with the motto: "Join or die." When these colonies became more united in their purpose of resistance to British tyranny, they placed upon their flag a well-formed well-formed rattlesnake in the attitude of about to strike, with the motto, "Don't tread on me." The next form of the United States flag was our present standard, the Stars and Stripes. On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress resolved that the flag of the United States be 13 stripes, alternate red and white, and that the union be 13 white stars on a blue field, representing "a new constellation." On Jan. 13, 1794, by an act of Congress, the flag was altered to 15 red and white stripes, and 15 stars. On April 4, 1818, Congress again altered the flag by returning to the original 13 stripes and 15 stars, as the adding of a new stripe for each additional State would soon make the flag too unwieldy. The new star is added to the flag on July 4, following the admission of each State into the Union. Also, the uneven end of an uncut tuft of hair on a brush. To strike or lower the flag: To pull the flag down in token of respect, surrender, or submission. To dip the flag: To lower it for a brief space as a salute or mark of respect. To hang the flag half-mast high: To raise it only halfway up the staff as a token of mourning.
Flag a plant. See Iris
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a plant. See Iris ; Sweet Flag Flamingo, a family of wading birds allied to the stork, the ibis, and the curlew. The legs are long and stilt-like. The feet are completely webbed. There are eight species, all tropical. Our species, forty-five inches in height, has rosy, vermillion plumage and black wing coverts. It is resident in tropical and subtropical America. It is found at times near Cape Sable, Florida, and occasionally along the Gulf as far as Texas. The flamingo has a long curved beak of such a shape that, when its head is down and the bill in the mud, the point is turned backward and upward under the neck. The bird wades in the water and feeds on the bottom. The sides of the bill are provided with "strainers," like those of the shoveler duck, through which water and mud are forced while snails and small shellfish are retained. Flamingoes frequent the mud flats of the seashore and the inland waters of Cuba, the Bahamas, and South America . They breed in colonies. Mr. Frank M. Chapman speaks of 2,000 mud nests on a level mud flat near a shallow lagoon on one of the Bahama Islands. In nesting the flamingo heaps up a cone of mud and muck ten or twenty inches high. It deposits its two whitish eggs in a hollow at the top. Despite the repeated assertions to the effect that the bird straddles this cone in hatching, it folds its long legs bird-fashion, like any other self-respecting wader. So much has been written about the flamingo straddling the nest that the following account written by Henry A. Blake for the Nineteenth Century is worthy of perusal: The flamingoes are very shy, and are only found in the remote and rarely-visited lagoons. When seen in flocks of some hundreds standing in long lines, they look at a distance like battalions of British troops on parade, their brilliant pink plumage showing up well against the dark-green mangroves with which the lagoons are generally fringed. In May they begin to repair the old nests, or to raise new ones, which is done by scooping up the surrounding mud with the beak, while they stand on the nest and pat it into shape and proper consistency with the foot. It is no mere treading on the mud, but one foot is used at a time, and the sounding slaps with which the cones of mud are got into shape can be heard at a considerable distance. The nests are always grouped close together, sometimes as many as four hundred being found in a "rookery." They stand from three to four feet apart, the area occupied by each nest being about twelve square feet. The birds do not always return to the same breeding-place, and if disturbed much while breeding, or if the very young birds are taken from the nest, they will probably breed next year in some other rookery, many of which are to be found in the least accessible parts of the great stretches of swamps. Having settled upon their breeding-ground for the year, the old nests are at once taken possession of by the oldest or strongest birds, who proceed to repair them by adding to the top the inch or more washed off by the rains since last tenanted. If the nest is very low, four or five inches may be added, and sticks, shells, or anything else that may be lying about the base, are scooped up and worked in without any apparent arrangement, just as if the soft mud with the debris contained in it were lifted with a trowel and placed on the top. No preparation is made for the new repair of the old nest, and, if an addled egg remains, it is simply covered over with the fresh stuff and built into the cone. I measured some scores of nests. The highest was fifteen inches, the lowest eight inches, the latter being the height of the nests in the first year. The nests were about eighteen inches in diameter at the bottom, and nine to eleven inches on the top. The concavity was very slight. In a few cases about half a dozen feathers were found on the nest, but in general the eggs were laid on the bare mud. I said "eggs," but, out of some hundreds of nests examined by me in June, there were not half a dozen which contained two eggs, one being the usual number. As some of those taken at the time were in an advanced stage of incubation, it is probable that at each breeding-season but one egg is usually laid. At length, having crawled under the roots of the dwarf mangroves that covered the slob like a network of croquet-hoops, we found ourselves at the edge of the marl, and within one hundred and fifty yards of the birds, who were still undisturbed. Here, with my glasses, I could see every feather, note the color of the eyes, and watch every movement. There were, we calculated, between seven hundred and a thousand birds, and a continuous low, goose-like cackling was kept up. Never did I see a more beautiful mass of color. The male birds had now all got together, standing about five feet high, and with necks extended and heads erect were evidently watching events, preserving in the mean time a masterly inactivity. Now and again one would stretch out his great black and scarlet wings, but the general effect was the most exquisite shade of pink, as the feathers of the breast and back are much lighter than those of the wings. The hens sat on the nests, and some were sitting down in the muddy lagoon. I watched them carefully for nearly an hour, and looked at every nest to see if the legs were extended along the side. In no case did I see a leg. I saw the birds go on to the nest and sit down. I saw them get up, and step down from the nest. In every instance the legs were folded under the bird in the usual manner. In my opinion my observation settles the point as to the mode of sitting; for even if, as I had been assured, the birds sit both ways, it is improbable that among the hundreds then sitting not one would have extended the legs. Remembering the great length of the flamingo's legs, it is evident that on a new nest, not more than eight inches high, the hen could not thus sit, nor would even the highest nest allow of the legs being extended while the bird sat upon it. After having watched the birds for the time named, we showed ourselves; but whether they had observed us before, and become somewhat accustomed to our presence, or that when sitting they are more easy to approach than I thought, the only effect was that the hens left the nest, and, joining the male birds, prepared for eventualities, nor did they take wing until we had begun to walk up to the rookery. While we were examining it, the birds flew around us within forty yards, so that we could have shot them easily. Of course, we did not do so. To prevent the destruction of flamingoes and pigeons by their wholesale slaughter during the breeding-season, the Bahamas Legislature passed in 1885 a Wild Birds' Protection Act, from which I hope for good results. United States. Cuba. Flags of all nations Flags of all nations Switzerland. Austria. Flags of all nations Great Britain. Russia. Flags of all nations Turkey. Denmark. Flags of all nations China. Flags of all nations
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's count of stars in 1910 stopped at forty-six, with Oklahoma's the newest; Arizona and New Mexico brought it to forty-eight in 1912, and Alaska and Hawaii to the present fifty, the current arrangement taking effect on 4 July 1960 under the rule of succession Aiton quotes from the 1818 act. The Betsy Ross workshop story, told here as plain fact, is now treated by historians as a family tradition first made public by her grandson in 1870; no contemporary document ties her to the 1777 design, though her Arch Street house in Philadelphia is still a museum. The naming of individual stripes for the thirteen ratifying states is likewise folklore rather than law: Congress has never assigned stripes or stars to particular states. Formal etiquette that Aiton describes only "by usage" was codified in a national Flag Code adopted in 1923 and written into federal law in 1942, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard flag factory he priced so exactly ended with the yard's closure as a naval installation in 1966.
Written for this edition, 2026.