506 



COTONEASTER 



COTTON 



suffering. He died 24th July 1842. Cotman's fame 

 as a water-colour landscapist has grown steadily ; 

 indeed Mr Cosmo Monkhouse opines that ' taken 

 altogether he was the most gifted of the Norwich 

 School, wider in range, a finer draughtsman, and 

 of more refined and cultivated individuality, than 

 "Old Crome."' His second son, Joseph John 

 Cotman (1814-78), was also a landscape-painter. 



Cotoneaster, a genus of Rosacese, sub-order 

 Pomese, closely allied to the hawthorn and 

 medlar. The species are shrubs or small trees, 

 some evergreen ; with simple entire leaves, more or 

 less woolly beneath ; small flowers in lateral cymes ; 

 and small, unpalatable, but bright-coloured fruit, 

 persistent in winter. C. vulgaris (said to be found 

 wild in a single locality in Wales) and other species 

 are common mountain plants of central Europe 

 and Asia, but have been largely introduced as 

 ornamental shrubs, the evergreen species (C. 

 rotundifolia, &c.) being especially used for cover- 

 ing walls and rockwork. 



Cotopaxi, the loftiest active volcano in the 

 world, is in Ecuador, in the eastern chain of the 

 Andes, and about 50 miles S. of the equator. 

 Humboldt gave the height at 18,880 feet ; Reiss, 

 the first to ascend it (in 1872), at 19,500 feet; 

 Whymper, who ascended in 1880 to the edge of 

 the crater, at 19,550 feet above the sea. The 

 valley at its foot, however, is itself 9000 feet high. 

 The upper vmrt of Cotopaxi, a perfect cone of 4400 

 feet, is entirely covered with snow, save that the 

 verge of the crater is a bare parapet of rock. 

 Below the snow is a well-marked barren belt 

 covered with lichens and shrubs, below which 

 again is forest. Smoke issues from the summit ; 

 sounds as of explosions are occasionally heard ; 

 and above, a fiery glow is often visible by night. 

 Lava rarely flows even during eruptions, but flame, 

 smoke, and immense volumes of ashes are then 

 ejected ; and when the heat melts large masses of 

 the snow lying on the sides, destructive floods 

 are occasioned in the valleys beneath. The first 

 eruption recorded was in 1533. Others followed 

 in 1698, 1743, 1744, and 1768, the most terrible of 

 all. On the latter occasion ashes were carried 130 

 miles distance, and thickly covered an extensive 

 area. Cotopaxi was quiet till 1851. In 1854, 1855, 

 and 1856 there were again eruptions of more or 

 less violence. 



Cotrone, a fortified town of Italy, 35 miles 

 NE. of Catanzaro by rail, built on a point of land 

 projecting into the sea. Pop. 9649. 



CotSWOld Hills. See COTESWOLD. 



Cotta, a publishing-house established at Tubin- 

 gen in 1640, and still one of the moot flourishing 

 in Germany. The family came originally from 

 Italy. Its most prominent members have been ( 1 ) 

 Johann Friedrich (1701-79), a learned writer and 

 theological professor at Tubingen, Gottingen, and 

 Jena ; (2) his grandson, Johann Friedrich, Freiherr 

 Cotta von Cottendorf, born at Stuttgart in 1764, 

 educated at Tiibingen, and for some time an advo- 

 cate. In 1787 he undertook the family business ; 

 and in 1795 established the famous Horen, a liter- 

 ary journal, under the editorship of Schiller, with 

 the friendly co-operation of Goethe and Herder. 

 Already in 1793 he had sketched out the plan for 

 the Allgemeine Zeitunq, which has appeared since 

 1798. The Almanack fur Damen ( 1798 ) and other 

 periodicals were no Leaa successful. Cotta now 

 began likewise to publish the works of Schiller, 

 Goethe, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, Jean Paul, 

 Tieck, Voss, the Humboldts, &c., establishing 

 thereby a claim to the gratitude of the wide liter- 

 ary world. In the seventy years ending in 1864, 

 the house had paid to Schiller and his heirs no less 

 a sum than 528,966 marks, to Goethe and his heirs 



in the same period, 865,554 marks. In 1810 he 

 changed his residence to Stuttgart, and in 1824 in- 

 troduced the first steam printing-press into Bavaria. 

 He died 29th December 1832. In the diet of 

 Wiirtemberg, and afterwards as president of the 

 Second Chamber, he was ever the fearless defender 

 of constitutional rights ; he was, too, the first 

 Wiirtemberg proprietor who abolished servitude 

 on his estates. He was succeeded by his son, 

 Georg (1796-1863); and he by his son Georg 

 Astolf (1833-76). 



Cottage, a small dwelling-house, especially of 

 labourers, varying greatly in size, appearance, and 

 comfort. Since 1860 especially, public attention 

 has been called to the deplorable state of the 

 cottages in many parts of Great Britain, and the 

 desire to secure their improvement has led to the 

 publication of many works on Cottage Architec- 

 ture, including those of Birch ( 1872), Young ( 1872), 

 Bicknell (1877), Shand (1878), Bruce (1886), and 

 Menzies (1886). 



CottbllS, or KOTTBUS, a town of Prussia, in 

 the province of Brandenburg, situated on the 

 Spree, 71 miles SE. of Berlin by rail. It is an 

 important railway junction and a busy mercantile 

 town, with manufactures of woollen cloth, carpets, 

 hats, linen, jute, leather, and tobacco. Pop. (1875) 

 22,642; (1885) 28,249 ; (1890) 34,910. 



Cotters. See CROFTER. 



Cottin, SOPHIE (nee Ristaud), French author- 

 ess, born at Tonneins, in the department of 

 Lot-et-Garonne, in 1773, married at seventeen a 

 Parisian banker, who left her a childless widow at 

 twenty. For comfort she turned to letters, wrote 

 verses and a lengthy history, and in fiction won 

 unfading laurels. She had already written Claire 

 d'Albe (1799), Malvina (1800), Amelie Mansfield 

 (1803), and Mathilde (1805), when in 1806 she 

 wrote Elisabeth, ou les Exiles de Siberie, a story 

 stamped with such real unsought pathos that it 

 has been translated into most European languages. 

 Madame Cottin died 25th August 1807. 



Cottle, JOSEPH, bookseller and author, born in 

 1770, was well read in English literature when he 

 started business in Bristol in 1791. He took kindly 

 to Coleridge and Southey, to whom he was intro- 

 duced by Robert Lovell, and offered them each 30 

 guineas for their poems ; and in addition 50 guineas 

 for Southey's Joan of Arc, with 1^ guineas to Cole- 

 ridge for every additional 100 lines of poetry he 

 might write. The poems thus arranged for appeared 

 in 1796. Cottle also became responsible in a busi- 

 ness, and partly in a pecuniary, sense for Coleridge's 

 Watchman; and an introduction to Wordsworth led 

 to his publication of the afterwards famous Lyrical 

 Ballads (1798). Cottle was intrusted with the 

 delicate duty of handing over De Quincey's gener- 

 ous donation of 300 to Coleridge, to whom he also 

 addressed some serious expostulations as to his 

 indulgence in opium, which drew replies from the 

 poet. Cottle's injudicious and unmerciful exposure 

 of Coleridge in his interesting but sometimes 

 inaccurate Early Recollections ( 1 837 ) has been 

 condemned. He wrote several volumes of verse ; 

 the fourth edition of his Malvern Hills ( 1829) con- 

 tains several prose essays. He retired from busi- 

 ness in 1799, and died 7th June 1853. His elder 

 brother, AMOS SIMON COTTLE (1768-1800), edu- 

 cated at Bristol and Cambridge, wrote various works, 

 including Icelandic Poetry (1797), which contains 

 a poetical address to him from Southey. 



Cotton, an important vegetable fibre, exten- 

 sively cultivated in various parts of the globe 

 within the 35th parallels of latitude. 



(1) Botanical and Commercial Classifications. 

 Cotton is the produce of all the species of the 



