352 



COLMAN 



COLOGNE 



son. Colraan held, till the time of his death, the 

 office of Examiner of Plays, to which he was 

 appointed on 19th January 1824, and in which he 

 behaved with great arrogance. In industry he 

 rivalled his father, and he received large sums for 

 his dramatic writings, some of which continue in 

 possession of the stage. He was twice married, 

 and died on the 17th October 1836. In 1830 he 



Eublished a very imperfect autobiography, which 

 e named Records of My Life ; but his most notori- 

 ous work is the preface to his play of The Iron 

 Chest, in which he furiously attacked John Kemble. 



Column, SAMUEL, American painter, born in 

 Portland, Maine, in 1832, studied in Europe in 

 1860-62, was elected a member of the National 

 Academy in 1862, and first president (1866-71) 

 of the American Society of Painters in Water- 

 colours. He has travelled extensively, and his 

 pictures include scenes from Algeria, Germany, 

 France, Italy, and Holland. 



Collliar, the capital of the German district of 

 Upper Alsace, stands on a plain near the Vosges, 

 42 miles SSW. of Strasburg by r#il. Among the 

 principal public buildings of Colmar are the church 

 of St Martin (1263), the Dominican convent of 

 Unterlinden, now a museum, the college, court- 

 house, and town-hall. Colmar is one of the chief 

 ;seats of the cotton manufacture in Alsace. Other 

 manufactures are paper, leather, ribbons, and 

 hosiery. Colmar is an old place, having been 

 raised to the rank of a free imperial city in 1226. 

 It rapidly became one of the most prosperous towns 

 in Upper Alsace. Fortified in 1552, its fortifica- 

 tions were razed in 1673 by Louis XIV. Pleasant 

 boulevards now occupy their place. Colmar was 

 formally ceded to France in 1697, but was recovered 

 by Germany in 1871. Pop. (1875) 23,778; (1885) 

 26,537; (1890) 30,399. 



Colne, a town in the east of Lancashire, on a 

 high ridge near the source of the Calder, a western 

 branch of the Kibble, 26 miles N. of Manchester by 

 rail. It has manufactures of cotton calicoes and 

 .mousselines-de-laine ; and it was formerly a seat of 

 the woollen industry. Slate and lime abound. Many 

 Roman coins have been found at Colne. Pop. with 

 Marsden ( 1881 ) 11,971 ; (1891) 16,774. 



Colney Hatch* a village of Middlesex, 6 

 miles N. of London, with a great lunatic asylum, 

 opened in 1851. 



Colocasia. See Cocco. 



Colocynth (Gr. kolokynthis), a well-known 

 medicine, much used as a purgative, is the dried 

 .and powdered pulp of the Colocynth Gourd, Colo- 

 quintida, Bitter Apple, or Bitter Cucumber, a glo- 

 bose fruit about the size of an orange, of a uniform 

 yellow colour, with a smooth, thin, solid rind. 

 The plant which produces it, Cucumis (or Citrul- 

 liis ) Colocynthis, is nearly allied to the Cucumber 

 (q.v.). It is found very widely distributed over 

 the Old World, growing in immense quantities on 

 the sand hillocks of Egypt and Nubia. It is also 

 common in India, Portugal, Spain, and Japan. It 

 has long been known for its purgative properties, 

 and as early as the llth century was in use in 

 Britain. The main supplies of the drug are 

 obtained from Mogador, Spain, and Syria. The 

 fruit is gathered when it begins to turn yellow, 

 peeled, and dried quickly either in a stove or in 

 the sun. It is chiefly in the form of a dried extract 

 that it is used in medicine. It owes its properties 

 to a bitter principle called Colocynthine, which is 

 more or less abundantly present in the fruits of 

 many of the gourd family. It is a curious fact, 

 but to which there are many analogies, that the 

 :seeds of the colocynth plant, produced in the midst 

 of its medicinal pulp, are perfectly bland, and they 

 even form an important article of food in the north 



of Africa. The name False Colocynth is some- 

 times given to the Orange Gourd ( Cucurbita aur- 

 antia), sometimes cultivated as an ornamental 

 plant in our gardens, on account of its globose, 

 deep-orange fruit. The pulp of the fruit possesses 

 the properties of colocynth, but in a milder degree. 



Colocynth is generally administered in the form 

 of pills, in which the extract is associated with 

 aloes, scammony, and in some cases with calomel 

 or with extract of hyoscyamus. In small doses, 

 the colocynth acts as a safe and useful purgative ; 

 and when accompanied by hyoscyamus, the latter 

 prevents much of the pain and griping which are 

 attendant on the use of colocynth by itself. In 

 large doses, colocynth is a poison. Colocynth 

 enters into the composition of some moth powders, 

 and renders them very efficacious. 



Cologne (Ger. Koln), a city and free port on 

 the left bank of the Rhine, 362 miles by rail 

 WSW. of Berlin, 175 SE. of Rotterdam, 149 E. 

 of Brussels, and 302 NE. of Paris. Formerly an 

 independent city of the German empire, it is 

 now the capital of Rhenish Prussia. Cologne 

 is a fortress of the first rank, forming a semi- 

 circle, with the Rhine as its chord, and the town 

 of Deutz on the opposite bank as a tete-du-pont. 

 It is connected with this suburb by a bridge of 

 boats, and an iron bridge 1362 feet in length, 

 for railway and carriage traffic. Pop. in 1871, 

 129,233; (1891)282,537; (1895) 321,964 one-sixth 

 being Protestants. The old streets are narrow 

 and crooked ; but the area freed by the removal 

 of the ancient fortifications, which dated orig- 

 inally from the 13th century, is laid out on a 

 more spacious plan. This area, which doubles 

 that occupied by the old town, was purchased in 

 1882 by the corporation for about 600,000; its 

 most prominent feature is the Imndsome ' Ring- 

 strasse ' or boulevard, nowhere less than 60 feet 

 wide, which encircles the entire old town. The 

 new fortifications include a number of detached 

 forts, planted round Cologne and Deutz, within a 

 radius of about 4 miles from the cathedral. The 

 ancient buildings in Cologne, both secular and 

 ecclesiastical, are of great architectural interest ; 

 the Romanesque and Transition styles are specially 

 well represented in the numerous churches of the 

 llth, 12th, and 13th centuries. The church of St 

 Maria im Capitol, consecrated in 1049, is the 

 earliest example in Cologne of a church with a 

 trefoil-shaped ground-plan for transepts and choir. 

 In the church of St Ursula are preserved the bones 

 of the 11,000 virgins, companions of St Ursula 

 (q.v.). The church of St Gereon boasts of the 

 possession of the bones of St Gereon, and of 

 the 308 martyrs of the Theban legion, slain 

 during Diocletian's persecution. The church of 

 St Peter contains the altar-piece of the cruci- 

 fixion of St Peter by Rubens, and that of the 

 Minorites the tomb of the famous scholastic, Duns 

 Scotus. 



The chief object of interest in the city, however, 

 as well as its greatest ornament, is the cathedral, 

 one of the noblest specimens of Gothic architec- 

 ture in Europe. This cathedral is said to have had 

 its origin in an erection by Archbishop Hildebold, 

 during the reign of Charlemagne in 814. Frederic 

 Barbarossa bestowed upon it, in 1162, the bones 

 of the three Magi (q.v.), which he took from 

 Milan, and this gift greatly increased its import- 

 ance. The bones are retained as precious relics to 

 this day; but the old structure was burned in 1248. 

 According to some accounts, the present cathedral 

 was begun in the same year, but others fix the 

 date of its commencement in 1270-75. To whom 

 the design of this noble building is to be ascribed 

 is uncertain. The choir, the first part completed, 

 was consecrated in 1322. The work was carried on, 



