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COMBE 



COMENIUS 



taught in every well-appointed board school. A 

 physiology lectureship was founded by the trustees 

 of George and Andrew Combe. See the Life by C. 

 Gibbon (1878) ; and Combe's views and articles on 

 Education, collected by Jolly (1879). 



Coinbe, WILLIAM, author of Dr Syntax, was 

 born at Bristol in 1741, and educated at Eton and 

 Oxford, which he quitted without a degree. ' God- 

 son ' ( or natural son ) of a rich London alderman, 

 who died in 1762, leaving him 2150, he led for 

 some years the life of an adventurer, now keeping 

 a princely style at the fashionable watering-places, 

 anon a cook at Douai, and a common soldier. The 

 last forty-three years of his life were passed mostly 

 within the 'rules' of the King's Bench debtors' 

 prison ; but he died at Lambeth, 19th June 1823. 

 In the Dictionary of National Biography ( vol. xi. , 

 1887) Professor Tout enumerates eighty-six works 

 bv Combe, published between 1774 and 1824 ; of 

 these, the Three Tours of Dr Syntax (1812-21) 

 alone are remembered, and even they owe much 

 to Rowlandson's illustrations. 



Combermere, VISCOUNT (Stapleton Staple- 

 ton-Cotton), a British field-marshal, son of Sir 

 Robert Salusbury Cotton, Bart., of Combermere 

 Abbey, Cheshire, was bom in 1772 at Llewenny 

 Hall, Denbighshire. Educated at Westminster 

 School, he entered the army in 1790, and in 1794 

 was made lieutenant-colonel of a new regiment of 

 light dragoons, with whom he served in India for 

 several years. In 1808 he proceeded, with the rank 

 of major-general, to the Peninsula ; in 1809 he 

 succeeded to the baronetcy; and in 1810 he was 

 appointed to the command of the whole allied 

 cavalry. He was present at the battles of Tala- 

 vera, Llerena, Salamanca, the Pyrenees, Orthez, 

 and Toulouse, and was raised to the peerage in 

 1814 as Baron Combermere ; although not at 

 Waterloo, he had the command of the cavalry 

 of the army of occupation in France. He was 

 commander of the forces in the West Indies, 

 1817-20 ; commander-in-chief in Ireland, 1822-25 ; 

 and commander of the forces in India, 1825-30, 

 where he captured Bhartpur. Raised to the rank 

 of viscount in 1827, he succeeded Wellington as 

 Constable of the Tower in 1852, and was made a 

 field-marshal in 1855. He died February 21, 1865. 

 See his Correspondence (2 vols. 1866). 



Combination. A combination to commit a 

 crime is, in English law, an indictable Conspiracy 

 (q.v. ). A combination to commit an act which is 

 injurious, immoral, or contrary to public policy, 

 is in some but not in all cases held to amount to 

 conspiracy. Combinations of workmen to raise 

 the rate of wages were formerly unlawful ; but the 

 law was amended in this respect in 1825, and now 

 such combinations are freely permitted, provided 

 they effect their purposes by lawful means. See 

 CONSPIRACY and TRADE UNIONS. For the Laws 

 of Combinations in Chemistry, see ATOMIC THEORY, 

 CHEMISTRY ; for Combinations in Mathematics, see 

 PERMUTATIONS AND COMBINATIONS. 



Combing, of wool, cotton, &c. See COTTON, 

 WOOL, SPINNING. 



Combretaceae, a tropical sub-order of Myrti- 

 florse, including about 240 species of trees and 

 shrubs, mostly astringent. 



Combustion is the term commonly applied to 

 those chemical processes which are accompanied 

 in a marked degree by the production of heat 

 and light. The most familiar of such processes 

 are those in which oxygen of the atmosphere com- 

 bines chemically with the constituents of what are 

 ordinarily spoken of as combustible substances, 

 such as wood, coal, fats, oils, &c. Chemical com- 

 bination is, as a rule, accompanied by the evolution 



of heat and frequently of light (see CHEMISTRY); 

 but every case of chemical combination is not called 

 combustion, because in many cases the quantity of 

 heat evolved is inconsiderable. 



When we speak of the combustion of, for 

 instance, coal or wood, we mean the chemical 

 process which consists, in general terms, in the 

 combination of the oxygen of the air with the 

 carbon and hydrogen which constitute the greater 

 part of the combustible portion of either or these 

 substances, and in the production of carbonic acid 

 and water. Many instances are known to chemists 

 in which the oxygen required for a combustion is 

 not derived directly from the atmosphere, but from 

 some oxidising (or oxygen -yielding) agent, and 

 frequently the place of the oxygen may be alto- 

 gether taken by some other element, as, for instance, 

 when metals, such as antimony in powder, burn in 

 chlorine. 



The combustion of every combustible substance 

 is accompanied by the evolution of a quite definite 

 quantity of heat, which is invariable for each 

 substance, whether the combustion takes place 

 rapidly or slowly. A piece of phosphorus, for 

 instance, as is well known, glows in the dark. 

 This is a process of very slow combustion, and is 

 never accompanied by much rise of temperature. 

 When moderately heated in air, a piece of phos- 

 phorus bursts into flame, and the combustion is 

 rapid and is accompanied by a considerable rise of 

 temperature ; whilst if the phosphorus be burned 

 in pure oxygen, the combustion is an extremely 

 brilliant spectacle, and a high temperature is 

 attained. In each case the actual quantity of 

 heat given out is identical for the same weight of 

 phosphorus, but the time occupied by the combus- 

 tion varies, and consequently the temperature at 

 any given instant must also vary. 



The quantities of heat given out by the combus- 

 tion of the same weights of different substances 

 vary greatly. The measurement of quantities of 

 heat produced by combustion and in other ways is 

 called calorimetry ( see HEAT ). 



The name combustion is applied to a particular 

 process in the analysis of organic compounds. See 

 (under Analysis) ORGANIC ANALYSIS. See also 

 SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION. 



Com^die Fran^aise. See THEATRE FRAN, 

 CAIS. 



Comedy. See DRAMA. 



Comenius, JOHN AMOS ( properly KOMENSKI ), 

 a distinguished educational reformer of the 17th 

 century, was born 28th March 1592, in Moravia, 

 either at Comna or at Nivnitz. His parents be- 

 longed to the Moravian Brethren. He studied at 

 Herborn (1612), and then at Heidelberg, became 

 rector of the Moravian school of Prerau (1614-16), 

 and minister at Fulnek, but lost all his property and 

 library in 1621, when that town was taken by the 

 Imperialists. He became a wanderer, and settled at 

 Lissa, Poland. Here he worked out his new theory 

 andmethod of education, wrote his Didactica Magnet,, 

 and was chosen bishop of the Moravian Brethren 

 in 1632. In 1631 he published his Janua Lin- 

 guarum Reserata, which was translated into many 

 European, and even into some oriental languages. 

 There is a trilingual edition, with woodcuts, in the 

 Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. In this work he 

 points out a method of learning languages new at 

 that time, which has been called the intuitive or 

 perceptive system, in which the pupils were taught 

 by a series of lessons on subjects easily understood 

 or appreciable by the senses such as natural his- 

 tory, the sciences, different trades and professions, 

 &c. The Vestibuhim, an introduction to the same, 

 appeared in 1633. Comenius also published about 

 the same time the Ratio Disciplines Ordinisque 



