CULM 



CULTIVATED PLANTS 



611 



Culm, the peculiar cylindrical hollow and jointed 



oi ( ii.-i.sne8 (q.v.). 



Culmination, an astronomical term, signify- 

 ing the passage of a star acniHH the meridian. The 

 star is then at the highest ioint (cut-men) of its 

 course ; hence the name. The sun culminates at 

 mid -day, or tsvelve o'clock, apparent solar time 

 which seldom agrees exactly with mean time, as 

 shown ly a watch or clock. The full moon culmin- 

 ni'^ at midnight. 

 4 'ulna. See KALNA. 



Clllpa simply means fault (generally the omis- 

 sion of some act) which leads to legal liability for 

 the immediate consequences. It may arise under 

 a contract, especially where many of tne obligations 

 of the parties are left to implication e.g. in the 

 contract of carriage of passengers ; or from the 

 mere relative position of parties, as where a mem- 

 ber of the public, or a neighbour, is injured by the 

 negligent use of property. The distinction between 

 cufpa and breach of contract, while theoretically 

 clear, is practically difficult ; and accordingly the 

 opinion of a jury is constantly required to ascertain 

 whether fault has been committed in the execution 

 of a contract. 



Culpable Homicide* See HOMICIDE, and 

 MURDER. 



Cnlpepcr, JOHN. See COLEPEPER. 

 Culpeper, NICHOLAS, was born in London in 

 1616, and after studies at Cambridge and elsewhere, 

 started in 1640 to practise astrology and physic in 

 Spital fields. In 1649 he published an English 

 translation of the College of Physicians' Pharma- 

 copeia under the title A Physical Directory, or a 

 Translation of the London Dispensatory, renamed 

 in 1654 as Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, or the 

 London Dispensatory. This infringement upon a 

 close monopoly, together with his sturdy and uncom- 

 promising support of Puritanism and the parlia- 

 ment, brought Culpeper many enemies and much 

 obloquy. In 1653 he published The English Physi- 

 cian Enlarged. Both books had an enormous sale, 

 and both are included in Dr Gordon's collective 

 edition of his Works (4 vols. 1802). Culpeper 

 wrote numerous other books, many of which were 

 left imprinted, and died worn out before his time, 

 10th January 1654. 



Culpeper, SIR THOMAS, was born of good 

 Kentish family in 1578. He studied at Hart Hall, 

 Oxford, and at one of the Inns of Court, next 

 bought Leeds Castle in Kent, where, or at Green- 

 way Court, near Hollingbourn, he mostly lived 

 till" his death, which took place in 1662. He 

 was knighted by James "I. in 1619. His Tract 

 against the high" rate of Usurie, published in 1621, 

 contended for the reduction of interest to six per 

 cent. His third son, SIR THOMAS CULPEPER, born 

 in 1626, made his studies at University College, 

 Oxford, and after making the grand tour, and 

 lieing knighted soon after the Restoration, retired 

 to his estate of Greenway Court, where he 

 died in 1697. Besides editing and prefacing his 

 father's treatise on exorbitant usury in 166S, he 

 himself published many pamphlets on the same 

 subject, repeating his father s arguments. He 

 wrote also Essayes or Moral Discourses on several 

 Subjects ( 1655 and 1671 ). 



Culross, an old-world village of Fife (till 1890 in 

 a detached portion of Perthshire), on the north shore 

 of the Firth of Forth, 7 miles W. by S. of Diinferm- 

 line. With memories of St Serf and St Kentigern, 

 James VI., and the Elgin and Dundonald families, 

 it has remains of a Cistercian abbev (1217), bill 

 has lost its manufacture of 'girdles,' its salt 

 works, shipping, and submarine coal-mines. A roya 

 burgh since 1588, it unites with Stirling and three 



other towns to return one member to parliament. 

 l'o|. 373. See Beveridge's Culrots and Tulliallan 

 (1885). 



Cultivated riant*. That the history of 

 material progress i directly connected with and 

 measured by man's increasing utilisation of the 

 vegetable and animal, no lew than of the mineral 

 world, is an idea of common experience, which the 

 researches of archiw>logintH in all part* of the 

 world have amply confirmed. The whole subject 

 forms, indeed, one of the most fascinating aspects 

 of the history of civilisation. Primitive man, 

 acquiring his acquaintance with useful plants 

 by slow and often bitter individual experience at 

 the very margin of subsistence, offers a striking 

 contrast with the experimental organiser of new 

 and in every sense remotely productive cultures 

 like that of the cinchona-tree in the Himalayas, 

 a contrast which spans the whole range alike of 

 the practical resources and the scientific culture 

 of the human race. 



Without speculation as to the precise steps by 

 which man passed from the hunting or merely 

 pastoral to the agricultural state, we find positive 

 evidence of the existence of agriculture long be- 

 fore written records. Thus, though the ' kitchen- 

 middens ' of northern countries contain no trace 

 of cultivated plants, the deposits of Swiss lake- 

 dwellings have yielded remains of fruits, of cereal 

 and other seeds, and of linen fabrics, showing the 

 existence of a considerable agriculture before the 

 use of metals. Ancient traditions and ceremonials 

 of China also bear witness to the remoteness of 

 cultivation there. The earliest Egyptian picture- 

 writings and the greater number of cultivated 

 species have arisen in that central cradle of civili- 

 sation which may be broadly marked off by draw- 

 ing lines from the delta of the Nile to the head of 

 the Persian Gulf, and from the Dardanelles to the 

 Caspian i.e. between 30 and 40 lat. From this 

 region the majority of European plants are derived. 

 Another great centre of ancient agriculture, how- 

 ever, is China; while the third is intertropical 

 America, where the ancient Mexicans and Peru- 

 vians practised the culture of not a few plants, 

 of which some have become almost cosmopolitan 

 since the epoch-making voyage of Columbus. 



Since the rise of modern botany (see BOTANY), 

 our knowledge of species at least possibly useful 

 has been greatly extended, yet there seems little 

 risk of displacement of the established cereals, 

 fruit-trees, &c., since these have the advantage of 

 an enormous past of artificial selection, which has 

 in many cases practically transformed them into 

 new species, apparently distinct from their wild 

 congeners, and incapable of continued existence 

 in the uncultivated state e.g. wheat, barley, 

 maize, pea, sugar-cane, yam, tec., and probably 

 also bean, tobacco, manioc, &c. Moreover, such 

 long cultivated plants usually exhibit greater 

 variability than naturally wild species, and thus 

 in every way new cultures tend to be unremunera- 

 tive. Hence the majority of species of primary 

 nutritive importance to man at present are among 

 tliii-e which nave been in cultivation for the past 

 2000 years ; and the progress which is now being 

 made* is essentially on lines which merely supple- 

 ment these ; the newer plants, cultivated for less 

 than 2000 years, being, according to De Candolle, 

 chiefly artificial fodders, which the ancients 

 scarcely knew ; then bulbs, vegetables, medicinal 

 plants *( cinchona ); plants with edible fruit- or 

 nutritious seeds (buckwheat), or aromatic seeds 

 (coffee). Here, of course, the demand for varia- 

 tions in food and drink, for narcotics and medi- 

 cines, for textiles and timber, all combine towards 

 progress ; in most of these the demand is at 

 bottom more largely aesthetic than utilitarian, 



