SIAMESE TWINS 



SIBERIA 



425 



rendered illustrious by the career of Constance 

 Falcon (or Phaulkou), a Greek of Cephalonia, who 

 attained the dignity of prime-minister. He was 

 the king's favourite, and induced that monarch to 

 send an embassy to Louis XIV. Ayuthia remained 

 the capital till 1768, when after 'a siege of two 

 years it was taken and burned by the Burmese. 

 The invaders were finally driven from the country 

 by a general named Phya Tak, son of a Chinaman 

 by a Siamese mother, who made Bangkok the 

 capital, and afterwards ascended the throne. The 

 present dynasty was founded in 1 782. 



Language and Literature. The alphabet con- 

 sists of forty-four characters and twenty vowel- 

 signs. The language is monosyllabic (the poly- 

 syllabic words being borrowed from Pali) and has 

 Hve tones, which render its acquisition difficult to 

 Europeans. The style in which inferiors address 

 superiors differs considerably from the common 

 language, and the sacred books are written in 

 Pall. Literature is comprised in some volumes of 

 history, medicine, laws, astrology, &c., but it is of 

 no particular value. The Siamese are fond of 

 reading fables, romances, plays, &c., of which there 

 is a cheap and abundant supply. 



The principal books on Siam are La Loubere, Descrip- 

 tion da Royaume de Siam ( 1691 ) ; Pallegoix, Descrip- 

 tion du Sayaume de Siam (1854); Bowling, Kiiuiilmn 

 and People of Siam (1857); Mouhot, TraveU in Siam, 

 Cambodia, and Loot (1864); Baatian, Die VOlker del 

 Btttichen Alien* ( 1866 ) ; Leonowuns, The English Oover- 

 neu at the Suiauie Court (1870); Bock, Templet and 

 Sttp/ittntt ( 1884 ) ; Colquhoun, Amonyit the Sham ( 1885) ; 

 Coit, Siam, or the Heart of Farther India ( New York, 

 1886); Chevillard, Siam et lei Siamoil (1889); Hallett, 

 A Thmaand Milet on an Elephant ( 1889 ) ; J. Anderson, 

 Enijlith Intermurte with Siam in the Seventeenth Cen- 

 tury (1890); Mrs Grindrod, Siam: a Geographical 

 Summary ( 1896 ) ; Maxwell Sommerville, Siam : on the 

 Mtinam (1897); H. Warington Smyth, Four Yean in 

 Siam (2 voU. 1898). See the map at Burma, Vol. II. ; 

 the article in the Timet, 31st January 1899 ; a series of 

 recent consular re|>orts ; and articles on ANNAM, SHANS, 

 and ToNO-KiNn. The Gulf of Siam is an arm of the 

 China Sea, is bounded on the N. and W. by Siam, and 

 on the E. by Cambodia and Cochin-China. At its 

 entrance it is 250 miles wide, and it extends nearly 400 

 miles inland. 



Siamese Twins, a name given to two children, 

 Eng and Chang, l>orn of Chinese parents in Sin.ni, 

 in IHI1, having their bodies united by a band of 

 hVsli, stretching from the end of one breast-bone to 

 the same place in the opposite twin. A union of 

 the l>odies of twins by various parts is not an 

 unusual occurrence (see MONSTROSITY). The 

 Siamese twins, purchased of their mother at Mek- 

 long, were brought to America by Mr Hunter in 

 1829, and to England afterwards. After realising 

 a competence by the exhibition of themselves in 

 the various countries of Europe, the Siamese twins 

 settled in one of the southern states of America, 

 where they were married to two sisters, and had 

 offspring. Ruined by the civil war in America, the 

 Siamese twins again made the tour of Europe, and 

 exhibited themselves in London again in 1869. 

 They died 17th January 1874, the one surviving 

 the other two hours and a half only, and then 

 dying from the effect of the shock on a heart 

 already weak. 



Kihhald, SIR ROBERT, Scottish naturalist and 

 antiquary, was born of Fifeshire ancestry at Edin- 

 burgh, 15th April 1641. Educated at Edinburgh, 

 Leyden, and Paris, he settled in 1662 as a physician 

 in Edinburgh, devoted much time to botany ami 

 zoology, ami aided Sir Andrew Balfour in establish- 

 ing a botanic garden. He was knighted in 1682 

 and appointed Geographer-royal for Scotland, in 

 16H6 was for a short time a convert to Roman 

 Catholicism, and died about 1722. He published 



many pamphlets on medical subjects, natural 

 history, Scottish history, and antiquities. 



His writings include Scotia Illtatrata, give Prodro- 

 mui Hiitorice Naturalii ( 1684 ) ; Collection of Several 

 Treatixet in Folio Concerning Scotland, as it wa of Old, 

 and alto in Later Timet (1707); A Hiitory of Fife and 

 Kinross (1710) ; and his Autobiography (1833). 



Sibbes, RICHARD, Puritan divine, was born 

 the son of an honest wheelwright at Tostock ( not 

 Sudbury), Suffolk, in 1577. He was put to Bury 

 school, and afterwards, by the exertions of some 

 friends who saw his promise, was sent to St John's 

 College, Cambridge, as suh-sizar. He graduated 

 B.A. in 1599, was elected Fellow two years after, 

 and was Trinity Lecturer from 1610 till 1615, when, 

 he was deprived, as also of his fellowship. But he 

 was at once appointed preacher of Gray's Inn, 

 where he laboured till 1626, when, after de- 

 clining Usher's offer of the provostship of Trinity 

 College, Dublin, he was made Master of Catharine 

 Hall, Cambridge. He was under the suspicion 

 of Laud, but contrived to escape the penalties 

 inflicted by his courts, and in 1633 was appointed 

 by the king Vicar of Trinity Church. He died 

 5th July 1635. Fuller tells ns Sibbes was most 

 eminent for that grace which is most worth, yet 

 costs the least to keep it, Christian humility, and 

 further, that as a preacher the truth he pressed 

 most urgently on his hearers was the Incarnation. 

 For his heavenly-mindedness he has been called, 

 and not inappropriately, the English Leighton. 

 Among his many books may be named the Bruised 

 Heed, which converted Baxter at fifteen ; the Soul's 

 Conflict, which Izaak Walton bequeathed to his 

 son, as he did the former to -his daughter ; Bowds 

 Opened ; The Returning Backslider, &c. There is 

 a complete edition in Nichol's Puritan Divines, 

 with a Life by the Rev. A B. Grosart (7 vols. 

 1862-64). 



Siberia (Sibir), originally the name of a Tartar 

 fort on the Irtysh, is now applied to an immense 

 territory belonging to Russia in northern Asia, 

 bounded by the Ural Mountains on the W. ; the 

 Arctic Ocean on the N. ; the seas of Behring, 

 Okhotsk, and Japan in the E. ; and the Russian 

 provinces of the Kirghiz Steppes and Turkestan, and 

 the Chinese empire (Mongolia and Manchuria) in 

 the S. Taken within these limits Siberia covers an 

 area of no less than 4,833,500 sq. m. nearly forty 

 times as great as that of the United Kingdom 

 and has a population of 4,484,550 inhabitants. Its 

 natural divisions, broadly corresponding to the ad- 

 ministrative ones, are : West Siberia, including the 

 governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk, as also parts of 

 Perm situated on the eastern slope of the Urals; 

 East Siberia (governments of Yeniseisk, Irkutsk, 

 Yakutsk, and Transbaikalia); the peninsula of 

 Kamchatka ; and the Amur region, which includes 

 the governments of Amur, Lsuri, the maritime 

 province, and the island of Saghalien (Sakhalin). 

 The group of islands, sometimes from the principal 

 one called Liakhov, have been described at NEW 

 SIBERIA. The areas of the provinces with their 

 populations are given under RUSSIA. Immense 

 parts of this territory are still but very imperfectly 

 mapped, especially in the wildernesses of the north 

 anil north-east a few surveys along the chief rivers 

 and lines of communication being the only sources of 

 information. But the leading features of the net- 

 work of highlands which covers Siberia can lie stated 

 in a few words (see also ASIA, Vol. I. pp. 485-487). 



The great plateau of eastern Asia enters Siberia 

 to the east of Lake Baikal, where it attains a 

 height of from 3000 to 4000 feet and a width 

 of nearly 1300 miles, and stretches therefrom, 

 with a gradually decreasing height and width, 

 towards the north-eastern extremity of Asia at 

 the Behring Strait. It is fringed on its south- 



