D 



is the fourth letter in our own 

 alphabet, as well as in the Phre- 

 nician, Hebrew, Greek, and 

 Latin, from which last it was 

 immediately derived. The 

 original symbol in the Egyp- 

 tian hieroglyphs was the 

 picture of a hand. When 

 taken over by the Phoenicians, 

 this sign was called daleth, ' the door,' from a fancied 

 resemblance to the curtained aperture of a tent, 

 rather than to the wooden quadrangular door of a 

 house. This resemblance may be traced in the Greek 

 letter A, whose name delta was derived from the 

 Semitic daleth. In Phoenician and the oldest 

 Greek, the letter had a short tail, \, but as this 

 form differed very little from that of B, and hardly 

 at all from that of 11, the three letters were differ- 

 entiated, B acquiring a second loop, R a tail, while 

 D lost the downward prolongation of the stern. 



In cursive Greek the letter was rounded, and 

 acquired the form 5, which is due to the ligature 

 connecting it with the following letter. These 

 changes are shown in the table given in Vol. I., 

 page 187, which also explains the singular process 

 whereby, in the minuscule form d, the loop of 

 D has been transferred from the right of the stem 

 to the left. In the Aramean alphabets the loop 

 opened out, as is seen in the Hebrew -T. 



The sound of D is the soft dental mute. It has, 

 like t, an affinity for n, and is often brought in as 

 a sort of shadow to facilitate the utterance of this 

 letter. It is intrusive in such words as sounrf, 

 compound, lenrf, riban</, genrfer, thunofer, kindred. 

 Sometimes it disappears, as in the case of cruel 

 from crurfelis, or winnow from winrfewe. It is often 

 assimilated to the following consonant, especially 

 in compounds derived from the Latin, as in the 

 words accept, attain, a/locution, appear, a/firm, 

 arrogant, gossip. It is sometimes replaced by I, r, 

 or 6, as in the words lacrima, U/ysses, /ingua, 

 arbiter, meridies, 6ellum, 6onus, bis. By Grimm's 

 Law a primitive d becomes t in English, and z in 

 German : as in the words rfecem, <en, zehn ; or rfuo, 

 <wo, zwei. A primitive dh becomes B in Greek, th 

 in German, f in Latin, and d in English ; as the 

 words O-/IP, J/iier, /era, and rfeer. Di followed by a 

 vowel sometimes becomes j, as in journal from 

 rfturnal. 



D, the Roman numeral for 500, arose out of 10, 

 the half of CIO, which was the old way of 

 writing , the primitive sign for 1000, which was 

 afterwards written M. 



D, in Music, is the second note in the natural 

 scale. See Music, SCALE. 



Dab (Pleuronectes limanda), a species of 

 Flounder (q.v. ), common on European coasts, but 

 not occurring in the Mediterranean. It is distin- 

 guishable from plaice and flounder by its li^lit- 

 brown, or ashen-gray colour, with small irregular 

 dark spots, by the roughness of its small, close-set 

 scales, and by its more arched lateral line. Its 

 length is from 8 to 16 inches. It is common all 

 round Britain, and in the Firth of Forth is known 

 as the Salt-water P'luke. Its flavour excels that 

 of flounder. A rather larger species, of even more 



northern distribution, is the Lemon or Smooth Dab 

 (P. microcephalus). It may be distinguished from 



Dab (Pleuronectes limanda). 



the common dab by the fact that the first ray of 

 the anal fin is not spiny. The brownish colour is 

 sometimes prettily mottled. 



Dabchick. See GREBE. 



Da Capo (Ital., 'from the beginning'), a term 

 in Music, frequently placed at the end of a part or 

 movement, indicating that the performer must 

 return to the beginning of the movement, or ( dal 

 Segno) to some other part of it marked with the 

 sign :#:, and finish where the Avord fine is placed. 

 The words are generally abbreviated thus, D.C., 

 sometimes D. C. al fine. 



Dacca, a city of Bengal Proper, 150 miles NE. 

 of Calcutta, on the north bank of the Buriganga, 

 occupies an area of 8 sq. m., and consists of a dull 

 esplanade and one long street meeting at right 

 angles, with a complementary network of narrow, 

 crooked lanes. Its position commands the principal 

 waterways of the delta, and it thus enjoys singular 

 facilities in the way of inland navigation. On this 

 account it was chosen, about 1610, as the seat of 

 the Mohammedan government of Bengal, which 

 rank it retained, except during an interval of 

 twenty years, until 1704. The suburbs extended 

 15 miles northward, where mosques and brick 

 buildings are still found buried in thick jungle. 

 In the 18th century it became widely celebrated for 

 the delicate texture of its muslins, and in connec- 

 tion with this manufacture the French and the 

 Dutch, as well as the English, had extensive estab- 

 lishments in the place. After 1817, however, the 

 animal value of the trade declined, under the coin- 

 petition of Manchester piece-goods, and the aspect 

 of the citv changed with the disastrous decay of its 

 staple industry. Its busy marts were deserted ; in 

 many quarters the streets, with their desolate, 

 abandoned houses, were overgrown with jungle ; 

 and the population fell from 200,000 in 1800 to 

 69,212 in 1872. Since then the fortunes of Dacca 

 have somewhat brightened ; the general develop- 

 ment of trade throughout the presidency lias brought 

 back a share of its former prosperity, and the ojen- 

 ing of the Dacca and Maimansingh State Railway 

 in 1886 has notably increased the transit trade. A 

 small colony of muslin-weavers still survives, and 

 other manufactures are coarse cotton cloth, em- 

 broidery, silver-work, shell -can-ing, and pottery. 

 Besides the Dacca College (1835), with about 300 

 students, there are many good schools, and a tine 



