Cryptography
the art of writing in secret characters or cipher, or with sympathetic ink. The simplest method consists in choosing for every letter of the alphabet sor some sign, or another letter or group of letters. Even the more complex, however, present, as a rule, only temporary difficulty to an expert. The fact that the most frequently recurring letter in the English language is letter e, that the common double vowels are ea and ou, that r, s, and t are the most frequent terminal letters, etc., are of no small assistance in forming a key to any given cryptogram. See CIPHER WRITING.
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Cryptoprocta
a fierce carnivorous animal of Madagascar, forming a genus and species by itself. It is plantigrade, but resembles a weasel, three feet long, and attacks the largest animals with great ferocity.
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Crystal Palace
a building erected at Sydenham, a southern suburb of London, in 1854. It was built of materials from the buildings of the great exhibition of 1851. The name is derived from the great quantity of glass used in the construction. The building is 1,600 feet long, 380 feet wide, and 200 feet high at the center. It cost about $4,500,000. It is now devoted to sculpture, architecture, painting, natural history, fossils, and manufactured articles. The building is surrounded by grounds, comprising 200 acres, adorned with trees, walks, statues, fountains, and flower gardens. The whole constitutes an instructive combination of park and museum. See Exhibition; Skyscraper
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Crystalline Rocks
a name given to all rocks having a crystalline structure. The crystalline texture may either be original or superinduced. Thus some crystalline rocks, such as certain calcareous masses , owe their origin to chemical precipitation from water, while others again, such as lavas, have consolidated from a state of igneous fusion . There is another large class of crystalline rocks, the crystalline granules of which present a remarkable foliated characterthat is, they are arranged in more or less parallel layers. This peculiar schistose structure appears to have been superinduced the original rocks having been either fragmental or crystalline or both and the result of great heat and pressure. Such highly altered rocks occur in the neighborhood of masses of granite, and cover wide regions, where there is abundant evidence to show that the strata have been subjected to enormous compression. It is therefore believed that pressure and the heat engendered by great earth -movements, and the intrusion of plutonic igneous matter, are among the most potent agencies in the production of schistose structure.
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Crystallites
minute non-polarizing bodies (the result of incipient crystallization) occurring in the vitreous portions of igneous rocks .
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Ctenophora
an order of Actinozoa, consisting of marine animals which swim by means of ctenophores . The body, which is gelatinous and transparent, is generally more or less oval in form. Most of the species have a pair of very extensible filiform tentacles. There are two tribes, eurystomata and stenostomata, the first containing the family beroidæ, and the second the families saccatæ, lobatæ, and tæniatæ. The ctenophora are found in all seas.
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Ctesias
a Greek historian of about 400 B. C., contemporary with Xenophon and partly with Herodotus. He was a physician, and lived for 17 years at the court of Persia. He wrote a "History of Persia," of which little remains .
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Ctesiphon
a city of Babylonia, on the E. bank of the Tigris and opposite Seleucia, the common winter residence con of the Parthian kings, and finally the capital of the Parthian kingdom. It was cap conquered by the Romans in A. D. 115, and destroyed by the Arabs under Omar in 637. Its ruins still attest its former magnificence.
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Ctesiphon
BATTLE OF, an important military engagement, fought on Nov. 22, 1915, between Turkish forces expedition, under General Townshend, which advanced from Amara, in Septembre, 1915, along the Tigris, with the object of capturing Bagdad. At no time did the British force amount to more than four brigades, two-thirds of which were composed of East Indians, while the Turks consisted of at least four divisions, with a strong preponderance in artillery. Ctesiphon, renowned in times of antiquity, was at this time only a large village on the Tigris, 18 miles below Bagdad. Close by stand the ruins of the ancient palace built by the Persian emperors, containing the greatest vaulted room in the world. Here the armies of the Prophet had also achieved one of their greatest victories, and it was because of this historic significance to the followers of Mohammed that the Turkish commander decided to make a determined stand at this point. As a military engagement, however, the encounter between the two armies was a victory for the British, an entire Turkish division being destroyed and 1,600 prisoners taken. But the success was dearly paid for; the British lost 643 in killed, 3,330 in wounded and over 500 not accounted for, out of a total of only 25,000 men. In spite of their success, the British were compelled to retire to Kut-el- Amara, where they were besieged and finally captured by the Turks.
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Cuando
a name of the Chobe, a tributary of the Zambesi.
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Cube
in geometry, a solid figure contained by six equal squares, a regular hexahedron. From the simplicity of its form it is the unit for measuring the contents of the other solids. Cubes are to each other as the third power of any of the lines inclosing their sides. In arithmetic, the third power of a number; a number multiplied by itself, and the product multiplied again by the original number; thus, 125 is the cube of 5, for it is 5×5×5.
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Cube
A regular solid body with six equal square sides or faces, each of which is parallel to the one opposite to it. It is a form of frequent occurrence in nature, especially among crystals. See CRYSTALLIZATION, AMORPHOUS.
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Cubeba
a genus of hypogenous exogens, order Piperaceæ, tribe Piperidæ. The flowers are diœcious, invested by sessile bracts; the fruits contracted at the base into what look like pedicels. They are found in Asia and Africa.
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Cubists
painters, belonging to the group called post-impressionists, who claim to see in the perspective of natural objects a series of cubical forms which they endeavor to depict in their art.
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