NUMA NUTHATCH. 



281 



archiepiscopal privileges, at Vienna, Cologne, Lu- 

 cerne, and Brussels ; and, in spite of the struggles of 

 tlie clergy, Pius VI. even established a new one at 

 Munich, in 1785. Joseph II., October 12, 1785, 

 denied the right of the nuncios to jurisdiction in ec- 

 clesiastical affairs, and the archbishops of Mayence, 

 Treves, Cologne, and Salzburg, agreed, at the con- 

 gress of Ems, to limit the popes to the privileges 

 which they had enjoyed in the first centuries over 

 foreign dioceses. But the elector of Bavaria sup- 

 ported the nuncio Zoglio, and the party of the nuncio, 

 at Brussels, who had been at first driven away, was 

 victorious during the troubles in the Netherlands, 

 excited by the measures of the emperor Joseph; 

 and, in Germany, the bishops of Wurzburg, Spire, 

 Hildesheim, and Liege, formed a party opposed to 

 the above-mentioned archbishops. Joseph II. could 

 no longer support the latter, on account of the dis- 

 satisfaction of his own subjects, and, after his death, 

 in 1790, the old state of things was restored, and the 

 power of the pope became firmer than before, until 

 the French revolution changed the face of Europe. 

 At present, the nuncios at Munich and Vienna can 

 do nothing without the consent of the courts, and. in 

 Austria, every clergyman is prohibited from transact- 

 ing business with the pope through his nuncio. 

 The nuncio in Lucerne, restored in 1803, enjoys the 

 greatest remains of a power incompatible with the 

 advancement of civilization. See Intermeddles, 



NUNIA ; a village of Irak Arabi, on the east side 

 of the Tigris, opposite to Mosul ; supposed to be on 

 the site of the ancient Nineveh. Here are mounds 

 similar to those of Babylon. The first is about a 

 mile from Mosul, and is nearly a mile in circuit. 

 The second, considerably higher, but less extensive, 

 is crowned by a building with a cupola, and is said 

 to be the tomb of the prophet Jonah, and is visited 

 by the Jews as a place of pilgrimage. Similar 

 mounds may be traced farther up for several miles. 



NUNS. See Monasteries. 



NUOVO (Italian for new) appears in many geo- 

 graphical names. 



NUREMBERG, formerly a free imperial city of 

 Germany, famous, in the middle ages, for its extensive 

 commerce, situated in the ancient circle of Franconia, 

 was given to Bavaria by the act of the German con- 

 federacy, and taken possession of September 15, 

 1806. It had, in 1822, 31 ,060 inhabitants within the 

 walls : the suburbs contain 5770. The small river 

 Pegnitz divides the city into two parts ; Ion. 11 4' 

 23" E. ; lat. 49 26' 55" N. The inhabitants are 

 mostly Lutherans. Like Pisa (though not to the 

 same degree), Nuremberg is distinguished for traces 

 of ages long gone by monuments, churches, houses, 

 which remind the beholder of ancient times, and ren- 

 der it, for every lover of history, and particularly for 

 every German, a peculiarly interesting place. The 

 ancient castle, on a hill, contains the public gallery 

 of pictures, with many paintings on glass. The city 

 hall, 275 (German) feet long, is a famous building, 

 in which many pictures of Albert Durer are still pre- 

 served. The Gothic church of St Lawrence, the 

 beautiful church of St Sebaldus, witli the exquisite 

 bronze cenotaph, the church of St James, and the 

 icstored church of St Giles, the arsenal, and other 

 buildings, are ornaments to the city. The library of 

 the city is considerable ; the high school good. It 

 ttas a polytechnic school, a conservatory of antiqui- 

 ties and Nuremberg works of arts, and an academy 

 of fine arts. Before the passage to the East Indies 

 round the cape of Good Hope was discovered, Nurem- 

 berg was one of the greatest commercial places in the 

 world, as it was the great mart of the produce of the 

 East, coming from Italy, and going to the north. 

 But the change in the commercial world, Ihe devas- 



tations of the thirty years' war, and the antiquated 

 institutions of the city, put a stop to her prosperity. 

 Yet the manufactures of the place are still very con- 

 siderable : it manufactures brass, steel, and iron wire 

 and wares, looking-glasses, musical instruments, maps, 

 engravings, &c. The toys made here go to all parts 

 of the world, as the frugal habits and great industry 

 of the inhabitants, assisted even by young children, 

 enable them to make them very cheap. The income 

 of this once imperial city is valued at 800,000 florins. 

 She possessed a territory of about 490 square miles, 

 with 40,000 inhabitants. Information respecting her 

 former history and works of art is to be found in the 

 Niirnbergisches Taschenbuch (2 vols., 1821 and 1822), 

 of which Der Sammler filr Kunst und Alterthum 

 (1824 et seq., with engravings) is a continuation. 

 The society of artists and friends of the arts are 

 publishing a work called Die Niirnberger Kunstler, 

 geschildert nach ihrem Leben und IVirken. Nurem- 

 berg gingerbread is famous among the boys and girls 

 of Germany. 



NUTATION (from the Latin nutatio) of the axis 

 of the earth. In the article Precession of the Equi- 

 noxes, the reasons are given why the axis of the 

 globe undergoes annually a change of position of 

 about 50", on account of the irregularity in the 

 attractions of the sun and moon, occasioned by the 

 spheroidal form of the earth. Of these 50", 30", on 

 an average, are referrible to the attraction of the 

 moon. But she cannot produce this effect regularly, 

 on account of her own change of position ; and there 

 result from these changes not only inequalities in the 

 quantity of the precession of the equinoxes, but also 

 a small motion or nutation in the axis of the earth, or 

 in the plane of the equator, in consequence of which 

 the stars appear sometimes to approach the equator, 

 at other times to recede from it, varying from their 

 mean place about nine seconds and a half. This ap- 

 parent change in the declination of the stars was first 

 discovered by observation by Bradley, and the phy- 

 sical causes of it were explained by D'Alembert and 

 others. It is obvious that a change in the position of 

 the moon towards the earth must produce a change 

 in the attraction of the moon upon the spheroidal 

 part of the earth. Now, this position is affected 

 considerably by the change in the situation of the 

 moon's nodes, which are subjected to an an- 

 nual motion of about 18, completing a revolution 

 round the heavens in about eighteen or nineteen 

 years. In consequence of this, the position of 

 the moon's orbit to the equator can vary 10, and 

 the change in the attraction of the moon on the 

 spheroidal part of the earth, arising from this 

 change of inclination, produces the nutation of 9 

 seconds, the period of which is about eighteen or 

 nineteen years. The precession and nutation alter 

 the right ascensions, declinations, and longitudes of 

 the heavenly bodies ; the latitudes remain unchanged. 

 D'Alembert (in his Recherches stir la Precession des 

 Equinoxes et sur la Nutation (Paris, 1749, 4to) and 

 Laplace (Mecanique Celeste) have succeeded, by 

 analysis, in reducing all these intricate phenomena 

 to the law of gravity with the most complete success, 

 and the corrections, calculated thereupon, and con- 

 tained in the astronomical tables, agree most perfectly 

 with observations. 



NUTGALLS. See Gall, Gall Fly, and Gallic 

 Acid. 



NUTHATCH (sitta, Lin.); a genus of birds some- 

 what allied in their habits to the woodpeckers. They 

 are distinguished as follows: Bill moderate, very 

 hard, conic-subulate, subrounded, a little compressed, 

 straight, edges sharp, mandibles equal, lower usually 

 having a small angle ; nostrils basal, orbicriar, open, 

 half closed by a membrane, and covered by bristly 



