544 



CRANBORNE 



CRANE 



gardens, in a peat-soil kept very moist or round the 

 margin of a pond. The berries of the Red Whortle- 

 berry or Cowberry ( Vaccinium Vitis-Idcea ) are sold 

 under the name of cranberries in Aberdeen and 



Cranberry (Oxycoccus palustris) : 

 a, flower ; b, fruit. 



other places, and are used in the same way. The 

 Tasmanian Cranberry is the fruit of Astroloma 

 humifusum, a pretty little trailing Epacridaceous 

 shrub ; while in Australia the same name is given 

 to other plants of the same order, notably Styphelia 

 ascendens and Lissanthe sapida. 



Cranborne. VISCOUNT, the courtesy title of 

 the eldest son or the Marquis of Salisbury. 



Cranbrook, a pleasant little market-town in 

 the Weald of Kent, 46 miles SE. of London. It 

 has a fine Perpendicular church, and a large trade 

 in hops. From the 14th to the 17th century it was 

 the centre of the broadcloth manufacture intro- 

 duced by the Flemings. Pop. of parish about 5000. 

 See Tarbutt's Annals of Cranbrook ( 1875). 



Cranbrook, GATHORNE GATHORNE-HARDY, 

 EARL (1892), was born 1st October 1814, at Bradford, 

 the son of John Hardy, Esq., of Dunstall Hall, Staf- 

 fordshire. Educated at Shrewsbury and at Oriel 

 College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1837, lie 

 was called to the bar in 1840, and in 1856, after un- 

 successfully contesting Bradford nine years earlier, 

 was returned as a Conservative by Leominster. In 

 1865 he defeated Mr Gladstone in the celebrated 

 Oxford University election ; in 1878 he was raised to 

 the peerage as Viscount Cranbrook. He was Under- 

 secretary of State for the Home Department ( 18i8- 

 59), President of the Poor-law Board (1866-67), 

 Home Secretary (1867-68), War Secretary (1874- 

 78), Secretary of State for India (1878-80), and 

 Lord President of the Council (1885-92). 



Crane (Grus), a genus of birds in the order 

 Grallatores, the type of the family Gruidae. This 

 family differs from herons, storks, &c., in having 

 the hind-toe placed higher on the leg than the front 

 ones, and in certain characters of bill and skull. 

 The members are also less addicted to marshy 

 places, and feed not only on animal, but, to a con- 

 siderable extent, on vegetable food. The cranes 

 are all large birds, long legged, long necked, long 

 billed, and of powerful wing. Some of them per- 

 form great migrations, and rly at a great height in 

 the air. Some twelve species are known, mostly 

 in the palsearctic region, but also in Asia, Australia, 

 and America. Unlike other Grallatores, the young 

 cranes are helpless and require to be fed. Only 

 two eggs are laid. -The Common Crane ( G. cinerea ) 

 breeds in the northern parts of Europe and Asia, 

 retiring in winter to tropical or subtropical regions. 

 Flocks of cranes periodically pass over the southern 

 and central countries of Europe, uttering their loud 



harsh cries in the air, and occasionally alighting to 

 seek food in fields or marshes. The crane, when 

 standing, is about four feet in height ; the prevail- 

 ing colour is ash-gray ; the head bears bristly 

 feathers, and has a naked crown, reddish in the 

 male ; the bill, which is longer than the head, is 

 reddish at the root, dark green at the apex ; the 

 feet are blackish ; the tail is short and straight. 

 They are very stately birds, though their habit of 

 bowing and dancing is often grotesque. The cover- 

 ing feathers of the wings are elongated, reaching 

 beyond the ends of the primaries, and their webs 

 are unconnected ; they are varied and tipped with 

 bluish-black, and are the well-known plumes once 

 much used in ornamental head-dresses. The visits 

 of the crane to Britain are now very rare, although 

 in former times they were comparatively frequent. 

 It feeds on roots, seeds, &c. , as well as on worms, 

 insects, reptiles, and even some of the smallest 



Crane ( Grus cinerea ). 



quadrupeds. The flesh is much esteemed. Cranes 

 use their bill as a dagger, and when wounded are 

 dangerous to the eyes of a rash assailant. They 

 may be readily tamed in captivity and exhibit great 

 sagacity. The Whooping Crane (G. americana) is 

 considerably larger than the common crane, which 

 it otherwise much resembles except in colour ; its 

 plumage, in its adult state, is pure white, the tins 

 of the wings black. It spends the winter in the 

 southern parts of North America. In summer it 

 migrates far northwards, but rather in the interior 

 than the eastern parts of the continent. To the 

 crane family belong also the Demoiselles e.g. 

 Anthropoides virgo, from southern Europe to central 

 Asia, and the Ethiopian Balearic Cranes e.g. 

 Balearica pavonina. See Blyth, Natural History 

 of the Cranes (IS81). 



Crane, a machine for lifting weights, worked 

 either by hand, or by steam, or by hydraulic power. 

 The most common hand form consists of an upright 

 revolving post and a projecting arm (usually at an 

 angle of about 45), the jib with a fixed pulley at 

 its extremity. The lifting chain or rope is secured 

 to the weight, passes over the fixed pulley, and then 

 round a drum or cylinder ; suitable toothed-wheel 

 gearing worked by a handle revolves this drum, and 

 thus winds up or unwinds the rope or chain, and so 

 raises or lowers the weight, while at the same time 

 the effort applied by the men at the handles is 

 greatly magnified namely, disregarding frictional 

 losses, in the same proportion that the peripheral 

 speed of the handles is reduced by the gearing in- 

 terposed between handle axis and drum axis. The 

 revolving motion of the upright post enables the 

 load to be deposited at any point within the sweep 

 of the jib. It is often arranged that the jib shall 

 be hollow j the chain then passes down it, and there 



