T H I 



373 



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of the town present a pleasing appearance, from their being 

 painted in fresco in a manner similar to those of Nice ; but 

 on proceeding into the town the steep, narrow, dark 

 streets, bordered by gloomy houses, disappoint expectation. 

 There is no public building worthy of notice, and no 

 public square or place except one at the entrance of the 

 road from Lyon : the town is inhabited by workpeople, 

 and presents very few (' not a score,' says one of our 

 authorities) decent houses. The chief manufactures are 

 of paper and playing-cards, fine cutlery and hardwares, 

 leather, and candles. The paper-mills are on the Durole, 

 in the steep rocky banks of which excavations have been 

 made for the sites of the mills : this branch of industry has 

 been established in the town from the sixteenth century. 

 The quality of the paper manufactured here is good, and a 

 large portion of it is sent to Paris. The razors, knives, and 

 scissors, though of ordinary quality, command a good sale, 

 and are exported to Spain, Italy, the Levant, and the East 

 and West Indies : the iron is brought from Nivernais, 

 Berry, and Tranche Comte. There are in and round the 

 town GOO manufactories or workshops for cutlery, employ- 

 ing, it is said, 6000 persons. The candles are made from 

 the fat of the goats reared on the surrounding hills. 

 There is a large poor-house, in which woollen cloths, lace, 

 and trimmings are made, and other manufactures are car- 

 ried on. These various manufactures employ three- 

 fourths of the population of the town and the villages 

 for many miles round. The population of the com- 

 mune of Thiers, in 182G, was 11,613; in 1831, 9836, of 

 whom G5HG were in the town itself; and, in 183G, 9982. 

 There are an inferior court of justice, a tribunal de com- 

 merce, a chamber of manufactures, a council of prud'- 

 hommes ; some fiscal or administrative government offices, 

 an hospital or poor-house, and a high school, or college. 

 There are eight yearly fairs. 



The arrondissement of Thiers has an area of 332 square 

 miles, and comprehends only 39 communes, with a popu- 

 lation, in 1831, of 67,870 ; in 1836, of 70,657 : it is divided 

 into six cantons or districts, each under a justice of the 

 peace. 



(Vaysse de Villiers, Itiiieraire Dcscriptif de la France; 

 Malte-Brun, Giographie ; Dictionnaire Gcographique 



THIMBLE, a metallic cap, in the shape of a hollow 

 truncated cone, worn on the finger in sewing, in order to 

 allow the needle to be pressed through the work with ade- 

 quate force, without injury to the finger. Thimbles used by 

 sempstn ~M s usually have slightly convex tops, which, as 

 well as the upper part of the Circumference of the cone, are 

 pitted with numerous small indentations symmetrically ar- 

 ranged, which serve to prevent the end of the needle from 

 slipping : but those used by tailors, upholsterers, and needle- 

 men generally, have no tops, but have the like indentations 

 upon the sides of the cone, with which alone the necessary 

 pressure is applied to the needle. Although occasionally 

 made of other materials, as porcelain and ivory, for orna- 

 mental purposes, thimbles are most commonly formed of 

 sheet silver, steel, white alloys, or brass ; or of silver and 

 steel so combined as to retain the advantage of the su- 

 perior hardness of the latter metal for the parts which 

 come in contact with the needle, while those which are in 

 contact with the finger are of silver. This is sometimes 

 done by making the cap and tipper part of the cone of 

 steel and the lower part of silver ; and sometimes by 

 making the body of the thimble entirely of iron or steel, 

 and lining it with silver or gold. As thimbles form an 

 indispensable part of the furniture of a lady's work-table, 

 much ingenuity is often displayed in their decoration by 

 embossing, engraving, and inlaying with gold. They are 

 usually formed by means of a stamping-machine, but the 

 following process, for the description of which we are in- 

 debted to Dr. Ure's ' Dictionary of Arts,' Sec., p. 1239, has 

 been practised by MM. Rouy and Berthier, of Paris: 

 Sheet-iron, one twenty-fourth part of an inch thick, after 

 being cut into strips of convenient size, is passed under a 

 !> inch-press, by which it is cut into circular discs of about 

 two inches diameter. These discs are then made red-hot, 

 and laid in SIUTI-MOII upon a series of mandrils, with hol- 

 lows of successively increasing depth, into which the 

 softened discs are forced by striking them with a round- 

 t'uri'd punch, about the size of the finger. After IK in / 

 thus brought to the required shape, the thimble is placed 



in a lathe, when the inside is polished and the outside is 

 turned, cut with circles for the reception of gold orna- 

 ments, and indented or pitted with a kind of milling-tool. 

 After this the thimbles are annealed, brightened, and gilt 

 inside with a very thin cone of gold-leaf, which is firmly 

 united to the surface of the iron simply by the strong 

 pressure of a smooth steel mandril. Gold fillets are then 

 fixed by pressure in the grooves turned to receive them. 



Sail-makers, in those coarse kinds of sewing which re- 

 quire the application of considerable force to the needle, 

 employ, in lieu of thimbles, circular plates of cast-iron, in- 

 dented or pitted on the surface. These are called palms, 

 and are secured to the palm of the hand by straps. 



The name 'thimble' is applied to the metallic eyes, in 

 the form of rings with a groove in their circumference to 

 receive a rope, which are used in rigging where it is de- 

 sired to form a loop or eye at the end of one rope, through 

 which another may slide with very little friction. 



THINOCORI'IsLE, Mr. G. R. Gray's first subfamily of 

 the family Chionididce, containing the genera Attagis, 

 3. Geoff, and Less. ; Ocypctes, Wagl. ; and Thmomrus, 

 Eschseh. 



THINO'CORUS, Eschscholtz's name for a genus of 

 birds placed by Mr. G. R. Gray in his subfamily THINO- 



CORIXJE. 



THION DE LA CHAUME, CLAUDE-ESPRIT, an emi- 

 nent French physician, was born at Paris, January 10, 1750. 

 His lather, who was a banker, gave him an excellent edu- 

 cation, and destined him originally for the bar, but he 

 himself preferred the study of medicine. He commenced 

 his studies at Paris with great success, but, for some un- 

 known reason, took his doctor's degree at Rheims. In 

 1773 he was appointed physician to the military hospital 

 at Monaco in Italy, which was then occupied by a French 

 garrison ; and in 1778 to that at Ajaccio in Corsica. His 

 zeal and talents were rewarded by the rank of chief phy- 

 sician to the troops destined to lay siege to Minorca and 

 shortly afterwards to Gibraltar. Here he had to treat a 

 fatal epidemic which prevailed among the combined 

 French and Spanish forces in a typhoid form, the descrip- 

 tion of which same disease immortalised the name of 

 Prince towards the middle of the last century. This same 

 squadron had already put ashore and left at Cadiz a great 

 number of Frenchmen that had been attacked by the dis- 

 ease, when, in the beginning of September, 1782. it. came 

 to the bay of Algesiras. Here the. naval hospital could 

 only receive fifty of their sick, while as many as five hun- 

 dred were in want of admission ; and to place these in 

 private houses-was not only a very difficult, but also an 

 undesirable proceeding. In these embarrassing circum- 

 stances Tliion de la Chaume conceived the happy idea of 

 making the sick encamp under tents as soon as tney landed, 

 an arrangement which was dictated by the climate, the 

 season, and the nature of the disease, and of which the 

 boldness was justified by success. La Chaume himself 

 w;ts attacked by the epidemic, and a great number of me- 

 dical officers of all ranks, as well as the nurses, were car- 

 ried off by it. When peace was concluded La Chaume 

 returned to France, and was received with distinction by 

 the Comte d'Artois (afterwards Charles X.), who had been 

 a witness of his self-devotion and success at Algesiras, and 

 who appointed him to be one of his own physicians. 

 Shortly afterwards he married, but in the winter of 1785-6 

 he found that, in consequence of the rapid progress made 

 by a pulmonary disease which had for some time threatened 

 him, it was necessary for him to go to the south of France. 

 Here he met with the kindest attentions from the officers 

 of the regiment which he had formerly taken charge of at 

 Ajaccio, who were at this time in garrison at Montpellier ; 

 at which place he died, October 28, 1786, at the early age 

 of thirty-six. Thion de la Chaume wrote but little, though 

 he is said to have carefully noted down every night what- 

 ever he had seen during the day worth recording ; he 

 nevertheless occupies a high rank in the list of army sur- 

 geons. His writings consist almost, entirely of articles in 

 medical dictionaries and periodicals, of vyhich the most 

 interesting is the account of the epidemic at Algesiras, 

 which was published in the second volume of the ' Journal 

 de Medicine Militaire.' (Biographic Medicals.} 



THIONURIC ACID. When nitric acid is made to 

 act upon uric acid, both are decomposed, and alloxan, a 

 compound of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and azote, is ob 



