Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 03.djvu/277

LEFT CYCLONE 233 CYCLOP-ffiDIA by an attachment of extreme beauty and ingenuity, every inequality in the road- bed of a railroad is detected and located. CYCLONE, a circular or rotary stoi-ni or system of winds, varying from 50 to BOO miles in diameter, revolving round a center, which advances at a rate that may be as high as 40 miles an hour, and toward which the winds tend. Cyclones of greatest violence occur within the tropics, and they revolve in opposite di- rections in the two hemispheres — in the southern with, and in the northern against, the hands of a watch — in conse- quence of which, and the progression of the center, the strength of the storm in the northern hemisphere is greater on the S. of the line of progression and smaller on the N., than it would be if the center were stationary, the case being reversed in the southern hemisphere. An anticyclone is a storm of opposite char- acter, the general tendency of the winds in it being away from the center, while it also shifts within comparatively small limits. Cyclones are preceded by a singular calm and a great fall of the barometer. CYCLOP-aiDIA, or ENCYCLOPEDIA, in modern usage a work professing to grive information in regard to the whole circle of human knowledge, or in regard to everything included within some par- ticular scientific or conventional division of it. The character of such works has of necessity varied from generation to generation, with changing conceptions of the scope and value of our knowledge and of the mutual relations of one de- partment with another. Though several of the ancient philoso- phers of Greece, and notably Aristotle, carried their investigations into every de- partment of inquiry within their intel- lectual horizon, none of them seems to have compiled exactly what we now call a cyclopaedia. Speusippus, indeed, is credited with something of the sort; but his works exist only in fragments. The great Latin collections of Terentius Var- ro, dating from 30 b. c, and the so-called •'Historia Naturalis" of the elder Pliny (23-79 A. D.), may thus be considered as the first specimens of their class. The 5th century saw the production of a curious and oddly written cyclopaedia by Martianus Capella; in the 7th, Isidorus Hispalensis compiled his "Originum seu Etymologiarum libri xx," which was afterward abridged and recast by Hra- banus Maurus. Under the caliph of Bagdad, Alfarabius or Farabi, in the 10th century, wrote a cyclopaedic work, "Ihsa Alulum" — remarkable for its grasp and completeness; but this has hitherto been left in manuscript (a fine copy is preserved in the Escurial). Vincent of Beauvais ( Vincentius Bellovacensis), who probably died in 1264, gathered together, under the patronage of Louis IX. of France, the entire knowledge of the Middle Ages in three comprehensive works — "Speculum Historiale," "Specu- lum Naturale," and "Speculum Doctri- nale," to which an unknown hand soon after added a "Speculum Morale." About the same time Brunetto Latini was en- gaged on his "Livres dou Tresor" (printed in Italian in 1474, and in the original French in "Documents inedits" (1680). The "De proprietatibus rerum" of Bartholomeus de Glanville deserves mention as being of English origin and highly successful in its day. Written about 1360, this became ex- ceedingly popular in the translation (1398) by John Trevisa. In 1541 the name cyclopaedia is first used as the title of a book by Ringelberg of Basel, and in 1559 Paul Scalich styles his work "En- cyclopjedia seu orbis Disciplinarum tum Sacrarum tum Profanarium." Among the numerous cyclopaedias of the 17th century it is enough to mention Antonio Zara's (Venice, 1615), and Alsted's (7 vols, fol. Herborn, 1630), both in Latin; Moreri's "Grand Dictionnaire Historique" (Lyons, 1674), which reached a 20th edition in 1759; Hofmann's "Lexicon Universale" (2 vols., fol. Basel, 1677; 4 vols. fol. Leyd. 1698), which was the first attempt to bring the whole body of science and art under the lexicographic form; Thomas Corneille's "Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences" (2 vols. Paris, 1694) ; and the most famous of all, Bayle's "Dictionnaire Historique et Criti- que" (4 vols. Rotterdam 1697), which was mainly designed as corrective and supplementary to Moreri. It was in the course of the 17th cen- tury that the cyclopedists began regularly to employ the vulgar tongues for their work, and to arrange their material al- phabetically for convenience of consul- tation. Of the vast "Bibliotheca Univer- sale," planned by Coronelli to fill 45 folio volumes, only a small portion saw the light (Venice, 1701-1706). The series of great cycolpaedic works in modern English practically began by the anony- mous "Universal, Historical, Geograph- ical, Chronological, and Classical Dic- tionary" (2 vols. 1703), and the "Lexicon Technicum" of Dr. John Harris (Lond. 1704). Ephraim Chambers followed in 1728 with his "Cyclopjedia, or an Uni- versal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences" (2 vols, fol.), which presents a distinct advance in the construction of such works, the author endeavoring to give to his alphabetically arranged materials something of the interest of a continuous