286 



CLEARING-NUT 



CLEF 



Subordinate committees of railway officers also 

 meet from time to time. The accounts of the 

 clearing system, and the balances due to and from 

 the several companies, are settled and adjusted by 

 the secretary of the committee, with appeal to the 

 committee, whose decision is final. The clerks at 

 stations of the various companies send abstracts 

 of all traffic monthly. The collected passenger- 

 tickets are also sent monthly. Number-men are 

 employed by the clearing-house at junctions where 

 the lines of different companies meet, who 

 note the number of every carriage, horse-box, 

 wagon, van, and sheet or wagon-cover on the 

 train going beyond the parent line, and make 

 weekly returns. The returns from the companies' 

 stations, together with those of the number- 

 men, enable the accounts of mileage and de- 

 murrage incurred to be made up by the clearing- 

 house, by whom the companies are debited and 

 credited, as the case may be. A debtor and 

 creditor account is sent from the clearing-house 

 monthly to each company, showing on the one side 

 in one sum what the company has to receive from 

 all other companies as their proportion of through 

 passenger fares, through goods and parcels rates, 

 and mileage and demurrage of carriages, wagons, 

 and sheets ; and on the other side, also in one sum, 

 what the company has to pay to others out of 

 moneys drawn by them. The balance is struck as 

 against, or in favour of, the clearing-house (as a 

 common debtor or creditor). In addition to declar- 

 ing the balances, the clearing-house supplies to 

 each company monthly statements of the details 

 of the traffic of each station. 



The number of companies parties to the clearing 

 system was recently between sixty and seventy, 

 including practically all the working railway com- 

 panies of Great Britain ; and the amount of business 

 of an intricate kind which was involved may be 

 judged of from the foregoing particulars, and from 

 the number of separate settlements, which amount 

 to eleven and a half millions per annum, represent- 

 ing seventeen millions of money. The staff now 

 numbers nearly two thousand. Regulations are 

 published annually by the clearing-house for the 

 guidance of the different companies in connection 

 with the system. 



The clearing-house system is made available 

 also for the recovery of lost articles of luggage. 

 Reports giving the description of each lost article 

 are sent from all stations daily to the clearing- 

 house, and by this means almost all lost luggage 

 is restored to the owners. The reports number 

 nearly half a million per annum. The government 

 scheme of the parcel post involves a quarterly 

 payment by the Post-office to the whole of the 

 railway companies of Great Britain and Ireland, 

 and the apportionment as between the companies 

 is effected through the machinery of the clearing- 

 house. There is a similar railway clearing system 

 in Ireland, with its headquarters in Dublin. 



The general railway clearing-house has never 

 been established in the United States, but there 

 are several of limited extent, each embracing such 

 lines as belong to an individual system. Thus, 

 one at Philadelphia is a common centre for an 

 association of lines, with about forty members. 

 Others are at Atlanta (Ga. ), Louisville (Ky. ), 

 Boston (Mass. . There are besides various rail- 

 way commissions, pools, and associations partaking 

 of the nature of a limited clearing system. 



Clearing-nilt ( Strychnos potatorum ), a small 

 tree of the same genus with the Nux Vomica (q.v.), 

 abundant in the forests of India, and of which the 

 seeds are much used for clearing water. They are 

 sold for this use in the bazaars, and travellers com- 

 monly carry some with them. These seeds being 

 rubbed on the inside of a vessel, muddy water put 



into it quickly becomes clear, all impurities settling 

 to the bottom. 



Clear-story. See CLERESTORY. 



Cleator Moor, a town of Cumberland, 4 miles 

 SE. of Whitehaven, with coal-mines and iron-fur- 

 naces. Pop. of parish ( 1861 ) 3995 ; ( 1891 ) 9464. 



Cleats, in Shipbuilding, are pieces of wood 

 or iron fastened to various parts of the vessel, and 

 having holes or recesses for fastening ropes. There 

 are several kinds, applied to various purposes. 



Cleavage, or SLATY CLEAVAGE, is a condition 

 of rocks in which they split easily into thin plates. 

 In true bedding the layers of rock correspond to 

 planes of deposition or accretion, but in slaty 

 cleavage the planes along which the rock splits 

 may or may not coincide with bedding-planes. In 

 point of fact they rarely do, but intersect the 

 bedding-planes at all angles. Slaty cleavage is a 

 superinduced structure the result of the extreme 

 compression which the rocks have undergone while 

 they were being squeezed into anticlinal and 

 synclinal folds (see ANTICLINE). When thin 



Section exhibiting Lines of Cleavage. 



sections of clay-slate are examined microscopically, 

 the grains of which the rock is composed are found 

 to be flattened or compressed, and drawn out in the 

 direction of the cleavage planes. Although slaty 

 cleavage is best developed in homogeneous fine- 

 grained clay-rocks, it yet occurs in many coarse- 

 grained rocks as well, but in these the cleavage is 

 never so perfect as in the finer-grained clay-rocks. 

 As induration necessarily accompanies cleavage, 

 the cleaved clay-rocks become of great economic 

 importance, and are familiar to every one in the 

 common blue and purple roofing-slates. 



Cleavers, or GOOSE-GRASS (Galium Aparine), 

 a species of Bedstraw (q.v. /, a coarse Rubiaceous 

 annual, with whorls of six to eight leaves, both 

 stem and leaves rough with reflexed bristles, the 

 fruit also hispid, and when ripe distributed by ad- 

 hering like a bur to any animal which may brush 

 against it. A very common weed in hedges and 

 bushy places in Britain and most parts of Europe 

 and North America, it was formerly of repute in 

 domestic medicine as a diuretic. From the time 

 of Dioscorides, and it is said still in Sweden, its 

 prickly stems have been used as a strainer for milk. 



Clef, a musical character placed on the staff, by 

 which the absolute pitch of the notes is fixed. 

 There are three clefs viz. the G, the C, and the F 

 clef. The G clef is placed on the second line, and 

 the stave with this clef is known as the treble 

 stave ; the C clef on the third line as the alto 

 stave ; and the F clef on the fourth line as the 

 bass stave. The C clef is a fifth below the G clef, 

 and a fifth above the F clef, thus : 



The C clef is also placed on the fourth line for some 

 instruments, and for the tenor part in vocal music, 



thus 



1 



: ; and in old vocal music, and 



also in full scores, the C clef placed on the first line 

 is used for the soprano. 



