published in 1826 under the title of Florula Cestrica, and was afterward merged in a larger and more valuable work, the Flora Cestrica, published in 1837, and rewritten and republished in 1853, containing a complete description and classification of every plant known to exist in the county. In 1843 he edited the correspondence of his friend the late Dr. William Baldwin, and accompanied it with a memoir, the whole appearing under the title of Reliquia Baldwiniana. In 1853 the name of Darlingtonia Californica was given in his honor by Dr. Torrey, of New York, to a new and remarkable variety of pitcher plant found in California. DARMSTADT, the capital of the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, and of a circle of its own name (pop. 54,800), in the province of Starkenburg, situated on the small river Darm, 16 m. by railway from Frankfort-on-the-Main, and 30 m. N. from Mannheim and Heidelberg; pop. 27,200, mostly Protestants. The new part of the town contains beautiful streets and squares, and fine pleasure grounds. The remarkable buildings are the ducal palace (with a library of 300,000 vols.), the chancery, the diet house, the stable of the grand duke, the mint, the Catholic church, and the theatre of the court. There are galleries of pictures, of statuary and coins, a museum of natural history, 2 colleges, a gymnasium, various schools, a botanic garden, a military academy, an extensive armory, and many scientific and artistic societies. Among the charitable institutions are 2 for the benefit of poor young girls, for orphans and widows, and a deaconess institute established in 1857. The manufacturing interest is limited to linen and woollen fabrics, carpets, wax candles, musical, surgical, and mathematical instruments, colored paper, starch, and coaches. Darmstadt, which contained toward the close of last century only about 7,000 inhabitants, is greatly indebted for its growth to the grand duke Louis I., whose statue adorns the Luisenplatz. The Theaterplatz has contained since 1852 statues of Philip the Generous and George I. A bank of commerce and industry was established in 1854, and the bank for southern Germany (Zettelbank) in 1856. Public conventions have been often held in Darmstadt, and a Zoll congress in 1854. The principal journal is the Darmstädter Zeitung. Liebig, the chemist, was born in this town. DARNEL (lolium perenne, Linn.), the ray or rye grass, has been recommended to be sown among other grasses on poor cold soils, and is spoken of as a pretty good pasture grass. Sir Humphry Davy has shown that in 1,000 parts 39 are nutritive matter, which is rather more than the foxtail (alopecurus pratensis) contains. The L. temulentum, or bearded darnel, is a noxious weed, and even poisonous qualities are attributed to the accidental use of its seeds occurring among other grain. This, the only poisonous grass known, is distinguished by its two-sided spikes and one-valved glumes. Neither is indigenous in America; the former from Europe has become naturalized; the other is an adventitious weed. DARNLEY, HENRY STUART, lord, the 2d husband of Mary, queen of Scots, born in England in 1546, killed near Edinburgh, Feb. 9, 1567. He was the son of the exiled earl of Lennox by Margaret Douglas, daughter of the earl of Angus by Queen Margaret, widow of James IV. and sister of Henry VIII., and was therefore cousin german of Queen Mary, and a cousin of Queen Elizabeth. On his father's side he was descended from the royal line of Scotland. When Mary announced her intention of contracting a second marriage, Darnley, who possessed a handsome person and was skilled in many of the accomplishments of the age, went to Scotland to urge his suit, and was accepted. His marriage with Mary took place at Holyrood house, July 29, 1565, on which occasion she proclaimed him king, and promised to induce the Scottish parliament to grant him a crown matrimonial. He repaid her kindness by petulance and insolence, and open profligacy and infidelity; and finally alienated her affections by his participation in the murder of her secretary, the Italian singer, Rizzio. A few days afterward he had the meanness to denounce his confederates in this act, and aided Mary in driving them from the kingdom. He might even after this have become reconciled with the queen, but his vices and follies continually widened the breach between them. In Jan. 1567, while at Glasgow, he was taken ill with the small pox, and during his convalescence was removed to a solitary house called the Kirk of Field, near Edinburgh, from an apprehension that, if taken to Holyrood, he might communicate his disease to the young prince, then a few months old. The queen visited him here several times, and seemed to manifest some tenderness for him. On the night of Feb. 9 the house was blown up with gunpowder, and the dead bodies of Darnley and his servant were found lying uninjured near the ruins. The earl of Bothwell was the chief actor in this tragedy, and it has long been a moot point whether the queen was privy to it. DARTER, a bird of the order anseres, family pelecanida, and genus plotus (Linn.). The bill in this genus is longer than the head, straight, and very slender, with sides much compressed to the acute tip, and the lateral margins finely serrated; the nostrils are scarcely visible; the wings are long, the 2d and 3d primaries the longest; the tail is long, of 12 feathers, and broad toward the end, which is rounded; the tarsi are short and strong; the toes long, united by a broad web, with short, sharp, and curved claws. Four species are described by Gray: P. anhinga (Linn.), in the southern states of North America; P. melanogaster (Gmel.), in Asia; P. congensis (Lecah), in Africa; and P. Nova Hollandia (Gould), in Australia. They are peculiar to warm climates, where they live in society on fresh-water rivers and lakes. The first named species, the anhinga, or snake bird, or black-bellied darter, may be taken as the type of the genus. The bill of this bird is about 3 inches long, the length to end of tail 36 inches, extent of wings 44 inches, tail 11 inches, tarsus only 1 inches; weight 34 lbs. The head is small, the neck very long and slender, and the body elongated; at the base of the upper mandible, around the eye, and on the throat, the skin is bare, and at the latter part dilated as in the cormorant. The plumage of the head, neck, and body is close and silky, with oblong rounded feathers; from near the eye to half down the neck on each side is a series of long, narrow, loose feathers; the scapulars are elongated, pointed, compact, and stiff. The upper mandible is olive, the lower yellow, with greenish tips; around the eye greenish, sac on throat orange, iris bright carmine; the general color of the head, neck, and body, glossy dark green, and of the scapulars, wings, and tail, bluish black; the long neck feathers are purplish white or lilac; at the lower part of the neck behind are numerous oblong small white spots, forming 2 broad bands as they extend backward; similar rows of white spots are seen on the smaller wing coverts; the first row of small, and the secondary coverts, are white; the tail is tipped with a band of brownish red, fading into white. In the female, which is smaller, the upper part of the head and the hind neck are dull greenish brown, and the fore part of the neck pale reddish brown with a grayish tinge, extending over the breast and ending abruptly in a reddish chestnut band; otherwise the colors are as in the male, except that the spots are less distinct, and that the fore part of the back has a brownish tint. In appearance and habits the darter resembles the cormorant, especially in the structure of the feet, wings, and tail; the bill is like that of the heron, as also is the neck, which forms the same sudden curvature between the 7th and 8th vertebræ. According to Audubon, there are no external nostrils in the adult, though they are found of small size in the young. This bird is a constant resident in Florida, and the lower parts of Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia; in the spring they go as far up as North Carolina, breeding along the coast; in these various localities it goes by the names of water crow, Grecian lady, and cormorant. They arrive in the Carolinas from March to April, and remain until November, preferring rivers, lakes, and lagoons in the interior, in low situations and secluded spots; though sometimes seen near the sea, they are not known to fish in salt water; they do not like rapid streams or clear water, but delight in the slimy and stagnant pools of inaccessible morasses, where a few large and naked trees in the centre afford good stands for taking their prey or observing an enemy. From the character of the water they prefer, which would prevent their seeing a fish beneath its surface, they do not dive from an eminence or on the wing, like the fish hawk and king-fisher, but drop silently from the trees into the water, swimming about and diving from the surface like the cormorant. They are excellent swimmers, very light on the water when not afraid, but sinking all but the head and neck on the approach of an enemy; when swimming in the latter manner, the sinuous motions of the head and neck resemble the movements of a snake, whence the common name of snake bird. After securing a fish, the bird comes to the surface, throws it into the air if not too large, and swallows it whole, head first. Its food consists of various small fishes, crawfish, shrimps, young reptiles, aquatic insects, eggs of frogs, young leeches, &c., and in confinement even boiled maize. The quantity of fish they will consume is enormous; but like other flesh and fish eating birds, they can remain several days without food with impunity. The flesh is tough, oily, and unfit for food, except the small pectorals of the female. They are gregarious in the winter, fishing entirely by day, and fond of returning nightly to the same roosting places, which are always over water; they are not very shy in their favorite haunts, where they are seldom molested. Their flight is swift, well sustained, and often at an immense height, where they sail about in graceful curves, especially in the love season; on land they walk and run well, much better than the cormorant, holding the tail up, and darting the head about continually, distending the pouch, and uttering rough guttural sounds. As a diver it is unsurpassed by fresh-water birds, disappearing with the utmost quickness, and swimming beneath the surface for a long distance by means of the feet, the wings partially spread and the tail expanded. Asleep, they stand with the body nearly erect, with the head under the scapulars. In East Florida they breed toward the end of February, in Louisiana in April or May, and in South Carolina in June; Audubon supposes the same birds may breed twice a year in widely separated localities. The nest is made of sticks, is flattened in form, generally in tall water-surrounded cypresses; the eggs are 3 or 4, 24 inches long, of a light blue color, covered with a whitish chalky substance. They attain their full plumage during the first year, and retain it through life. When wounded, the sharp bill is rather a formidable weapon of defence. According to Audubon, the quills and tail feathers, as in the cormorant, have the shaft hollow, even to the tip, with transparent walls of the same nature as the barrel, which last is the same as in other birds. DARTFORD, a market town of Kent, England, on the Darent, 17 m. by the North Kent railway S. E. of London; pop. in 1851, 5,763. It is situated in a valley at a ford in the river, from which it takes its name, and consists chiefly of one wide street on the Dover road. It has a large ancient church, a number of chapels, several schools, an alms house, the ruins of a nunnery founded in 1371, a large iron foundery and machine shop, grain, oil, powder, paper, and cotton mills, calico and silk printing works, and gas works. The first mill for rolling and slitting iron established in England was in the neighborhood of this town. The river is navi gable from this point to its junction with the DARTMOOR, a desolate tract of land in Dev- DARTMOUTH COLLEGE with gas. Many of the houses are very old, and display some fine specimens of wood-carv chapels, schools, and alms houses, a market ing. The town contains 3 churches, several place, and remains of a castle supposed to be of the reign of Henry VII. The harbor, which is entered by a narrow channel between the fort and battery of St. Petrox and the old castle, is safe, convenient, and large enough to accommodate 500 ships. A great many vessels belonging to this port were formerly engaged in the Newfoundland fisheries, but this branch of industry has greatly declined. Ship building, rope making, and paper making are carried on to some extent; there is an export trade in woollen goods, cider, and barley, in exchange for wine, oil, salt, and fruit; and slate and limestone are quarried in the neighborhood. The number of vessels registered as belonging to the port, Dec. 31, 1856, was 398, tonnage 34,987; number of vessels entered during the year 757, tonnage 39,969; number of vessels cleared 391, tonnage 19,026. During the civil wars the and once by the parliamentarians. It returns town was twice captured, once by the royalists, one member to the house of commons, and gives the title of earl to the Legge family. It is one of the quarantine ports of the channel. ing in Hanover, N. H., which received its charDARTMOUTH COLLEGE, a seat of learnter in 1769, and went into operation in the following year under the presidency of Eleazer Wheelock, D.D. school established by the Rev. Mr. Wheelock in It grew out of an earlier Lebanon, Conn., and designed for the education of Indian children. The idea of this school had been suggested to him by his success in educating a young Mohegan Indian, Samson Occom, who became a remarkable preacher. Other pupils from the Delaware tribe were afobject of public attention and interest. terward received, and the school became an 1754, a farmer named Joshua Moor gave a house and two acres of land for the In the institution, which was from this time known purposes of companied by the Rev. Nathaniel Whitaker, visas Moor's Indian charity school. Occom, acited England to collect funds; a sum of about £10,000 was subscribed, and a board of trustees was there organized, of which Lord Dartmouth, The school was so much resorted to by the naone of the subscribers, was made president. transfer it to some place nearer to them. Many tive tribes that Dr. Wheelock determined to proffers of situations were extended to him, but he selected the town of Hanover, on the Connecticut river, in the western part of the state of New Hampshire, and grants of about 44,000 acres of land were made to him. The institution was chartered by Gov. Wentworth under the name of a college, with all the privileges and immunities of any university within the British realm; and the name of Lord Dartmouth was adopted for it. Moor's school soon afterward obtained an independant charter, and still remains as an academical or preparatory department. In 1770 Dr. Wheelock removed his family and school, consisting of 18 whites and 6 Indians, from Lebanon to the wilderness of Hanover, where the whole colony lived in log huts. In 1771 the first class of 4 students was graduated. President Wheelock retained his office till his death in 1779, and was succeeded by his son John Wheelock, who in 1782 was sent by the trustees to Europe to promote the interests of the college; and through introductions by Gen. Washington, Dr. Franklin, and John Adams, he obtained considerable sums of money, philosophical instruments, and other valuable donations. The prince of Orange was one of the donors. He returned in 1784, and after a presidency of 36 years, was removed from the office by the trustees in 1815. This act, which was occasioned chiefly by a local religious controversy, led to a conflict with the legislature of the state; that body claimed the right to amend a charter of which it was the guardian, and in 1816 passed acts creating a new corporation in which the property was vested, and changing the title of the college to Dartmouth university. The old trustees began a suit for the recovery of the college property, which was decided against them in the supreme court of the state. It was carried by appeal before Chief Justice Marshall in the supreme court of the United States, where the judgment was reversed, and the principle of the inviolability of chartered property fully established. It was by his elaborate argument in behalf of the plaintiffs in this case that Daniel Webster, at the age of 35, took rank among the most distinguished jurists in the country. "He opened his cause," says Mr. Ticknor, "with perfect simplicity in the general statement of its facts, and then went on to unfold the topics of his argument in a lucid order, which made every position sustain every other. The logic and the law were rendered irresistible. As he advanced, his heart warmed to the subject and the occasion. Thoughts and feelings that had grown old with his best affections rose unbidden to his lips. He remembered that the institution he was defending was the one where his own youth had been nurtured; and the moral tenderness and beauty this gave to the grandeur of his thoughts, the sort of religious sensibility it imparted to his urgent appeals and demands for the stern fulfilment of what law and justice required, wrought up the whole audience to an extraordinary state of excitement." Webster was associated in this case with Jeremiah Smith and Jeremiah Mason, and opposed to John Holmes of Maine, William Pinkney, and William Wirt. The question excited also a violent controversy in the local newspapers. Wheelock was raised to the presidency of the university by the new board, in Feb. 1817, but died within two months, and was succeeded by William Allen, D.D., who retained the office till the decision of the question in favor of the college by the supreme court, in 1819. Francis Brown, D.D., was the successor of Wheelock as president of the college, having VOL. VI.-18 been elected by the old board in 1815, and retained the office till his death in 1820. He was succeeded in the presidency by the Rev. Daniel Dana, who, after one year, was succeeded by Bennet Tyler, D.D.; upon whose resignation in 1828, Nathan Lord, D.D., the present incumbent, received the appointment. The college comprises also a medical school, and the Chandler scientific school, the latter of which went into operation in 1852, being founded by a donation of $50,000 from Abiel Chandler, to give instruction in the practical and useful arts of life, as mechanics, engineering, architecture, drawing, and the modern languages. In 1858-'9 there were 50 students in the medical school, and 44 in the scientific. The faculty of the college consists of the president and 16 professors. The whole number of alumni is 4,365, and the present number of undergraduates (1859) is 260. The different libraries connected with the college have an aggregate of about 34,000 volumes. An astronomical observatory, of excellent design and furniture, has lately been erected through the munificence of George C. Shattuck. DARU, PIERRE ANTOINE NOËL BRUNO, count, a French statesman and author, born at Montpellier, Jan. 12, 1767, died near Meulan, Sept. 5, 1829. He studied with excellent success under the Oratorians of Tournon, devoted himself to literature, producing poems and translations, most of which remain unpublished, and from 1784 to 1791 was commissary of war. Adopting the principles of the revolution, he served as ordnance commissary in the army of Brittany, but was suspected and imprisoned during the reign of terror, recovered his liberty on the 9th Thermidor, in 1796 entered into the ministry of war under Petiet, soon after became chief commissary, and during this period pursued his literary studies, publishing in 1797 a translation of Horace. After the return of Napoleon from Egypt, he was nominated inspector of the troops and secretary of the ministry of war, was elected tribune in 1802, and under the empire in 1805 and 1806 became counsellor of state, superintendent-general of the house of Napoleon, superintendent-general of the grand army, and member of the French academy. He was charged with the execution of the treaties of Marengo, Presburg, and Tilsit, was then sent as plenipotentiary to Berlin, and after the battles of Eckmühl and Wagram joined the emperor at Ratisbon, followed him to Vienna, and was there appointed to execute the treaty of Vienna and to administer the Austrian states. He opposed the alliance of the emperor by marriage with any of the royal families of Europe, maintaining that his throne was founded on different principles from theirs. In 1811, as minister of state, the whole administration of the empire rested upon him; and in the next year he strongly opposed the Russian campaign, in which as superintendent-general of the army he displayed all the resources of his courage and talent. He was one of the last to give adher ence to the reestablished Bourbons, and was among the first who rallied about Napoleon when he reappeared from Elba. Retiring from public life after the battle of Waterloo, he composed at Bourges and on his estate near Meulan his Histoire de Vénise (7 vols., Paris, 1819; 3d ed., 1827), one of the most thorough and interesting works on the subject; and in 1819 was recalled from exile, entered the chamber of peers, took his place on the left, and until his death was an eloquent opponent of the reactionary tendencies of the government. He was as indefatigable in literature as in administrative affairs, and published several elegant poems and satirical epistles, Éloges of Sully, Volney, and Laplace, a Histoire de Bretagne (Paris, 1826), and reports on the rupture of the treaty of Amiens, the monetary system, public instruction, the right of petition, individual liberty, and the censorship of the press. Two of his sons, NAPOLEON and VICTOR PAUL, were prominent in French politics prior to the establishment of the present empire. DARWAR, or DHARWAR, & district of the Bombay presidency, British India, bounded N. by Belgaum, E. by the Nizam's territory and Bellary, S. by Mysore, and W. by North Canara; area, 3,837 sq. m.; pop. 754,385. The soil and climate are adapted to the growth of cotton, and in 1842 the New Orleans species of that plant was introduced with such success, that in 1851 nearly 43,000 acres of it were under cultivation. The cotton is shipped at Coomta, from which the principal marts are 80 or 100 m. distant. The district formed part of the ancient kingdom of Bejapoor, and was overrun by Sevajee in 1675, and by Hyder Ali in 1777. It is comprised in the region known as the South Mahratta country, but nearly all the inhabitants are Canarese. It was acquired by the British on the overthrow of the Peishwa in 1818.-DARWAR, the chief town of the above district, is situated near the W. frontier, 70 m. E. from Goa, and 288 S. E. from Bombay. It is defended by a wall and ditch, and a fortress originally strong, but now much decayed. It is the seat of 3 government schools, one Mahratta, one Canarese, and one English. It was captured by Hyder Ali in 1778, and retaken by the British and Mahrattas in 1791. DARWEN OVER, a town of Lancashire, England; pop. in 1851, 11,702. It is laid out with little regularity, but is well built, rapidly improving, and supplied with gas and abundance of water. The principal branches of industry pursued here are the cotton manufactures, paper making and staining, silk weaving, and carpet making. The cotton mills, which are the most extensive establishments of the town, contain 3,800 looms and 63,000 spindles. DARWIN, CHARLES, an English naturalist, was engaged on board the Beagle, Capt. Fitzroy, in that officer's exploring expedition, 1832 to 1836. On his return he published several works, principally records of his experience, and of the geological and physiological results of his travels and observations. Among these are the "Voyage of a Naturalist;"" Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the various Countries visited by H. M. S. Beagle;" "Geological Observations on South America;" numerous papers on the islands of Polynesia and Australia, published in the "Proceedings of the Geological Society;" and a "Monograph of the Family Cirripedia," a work of extraordinary scientific ability, published by the Ray society, and distributed to their members in 1851-'53. DARWIN, ERASMUS, an English physiologist and poet, born at Elton, Nottinghamshire, Dec. 12, 1731, died at Derby, April 18, 1802. He studied at Cambridge, was graduated at Edinburgh, and settled as a physician at Lichfield. The work by which he is best known is the "Botanic Garden," a poem in 2 books, the first explaining the economy of vegetation, the 2d personifying "the loves of the plants." Gnomes, sylphs, nymphs, and salamanders were adopted to give machinery to the poem. He next published "Zoonomia, or Laws of Organic Life," a curious physiological essay. In 1800 he published "Phytologia, or Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening;" also "Letters on Female Education," addressed to his daughters. A poem, entitled the "Temple of Nature," appeared after his death (1803). Darwin's writings had a large popularity in their day. Miss Seward, in 1804, published his memoirs. DASH, N. CISTERNE DE COURTIRAS DE SAINT MARS, Viscountess, better known under the title of countess, a literary French woman, born in Paris about 1805, received an excellent education, was married at an early age, and subsequently, owing to pecuniary reverses, adopted literature as a profession. She has written about 40 novels, of which not fewer than 13 appeared between 1853 and 1857. DASHKOFF, EKATERINA ROMANOVNA, a Russian princess, born in 1744, died near Moscow, Jan. 4, 1810. She was the 3d daughter of Count Roman Woronzoff, received a literary education, and was at an early age attached to the person of the future empress, Catharine II. In her 16th year she married Prince Dashkoff, with whom she lived for some time in Moscow, and then returned to the court, where her sister Elizabeth had become the favorite of the new emperor, Peter III., while his wife Catharine was treated with insulting brutality. Indignant at the insolence of her sister, and the unworthy situation of her friend, whose ambition, passions, and love of study were congenial to hers, she became, at the age of 18, the soul of a conspiracy which deprived Peter of his throne and life, and made his German wife the autocrat of Russia. The means she employed to strengthen this conspiracy were often the opposite of pure; and at the execution, dressed in male costume and mounted on horseback, she commanded a body of soldiers. But the scanty rewards the empress bestowed upon her by no means answered the expectations of the princess; her request to receive the command of the imperial |
