Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 10.djvu/25

LEFT TROGLODYTIDiE 9 TROLLOPE three, however, are well known, and have been carefully described : T. gorilla, the gorilla; T. niger, the common, and T. calvus, the bald chimpanzee. There are probably other species, since Livingstone met with what he supposed to be a new species in the forest region W. of the Nile, and another has been described by Gratiolet and Alix. TROGLODYTID^, in ornithology, the wrens, a family of Passerine birds with 17 genera and 94 species. They are rather abundant and varied in the Neo- tropical region, with a few species scat- tered through the Nearctic, Palasarctic, and parts of the Oriental region. The constitution of the family is by no means well determined. TROGLODYTIN-ffi, a sub-family of Timaliidse distinguished by the bill being long and curved, short in proportion to the body. TROGONID^. in ornithology, a family of picarian birds, with seven gen- era and 44 species. They are tolerably abundant in the Neotropical and Orien- tal regions; and are represented in Africa by a single genus: bill short, strong, with a wide gape; tail generally long and in some species very long; feet small and often feathered almost to the toes, two of which are placed in front and two behind. They form a well- marked family of insectivorous forest- haunting birds of small size, whose dense, puffy plumage exhibits the most exquisite tints of pink, crimson, orange, brown or metallic green, often relieved by delicate bands of pure white. In one Guatemalan species, Pharomacrus mo- oinno, the long-tailed trogon or quesal, the tail coverts are enormously length- ened into waving plums of rich metallic green, as graceful and marvelous as those of the birds of paradise. Trogong are unable to use their feet for climbing, and usually take their station on the branches of a tree, dashing on insects. as they fly past, or on some fruit at a little distance from them, and returning to their seat to eat what they have secured. TROJAN WAR, THE, a legendary war which forms the theme of the "Iliad" of Homer. The story briefly told is that Paris (Alexander), son of Priam, King of Troy, carried off Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta; that the Achaean princes, under the command of Menelaus' brother, Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, undertook to recover Helen; that the Achzeans, having besieged Troy for nine years, Gventually sacked the city and recovered Helen. These events wei'e regarded as historical not only by the Greeks themselves, but by the moderns as late as the first half of the 19th century, and a date (1184 b. c.) was as- signed with as much precision and con- fidence to the fall of Troy as to the fall of man. But the remarkable revolution in the views of scholars about mythology, begun by Lobeck in 1829, and by the brothers Grimm, led to the belief that the war was legendary. Many of the incidents were shown to be myths com- mon to most Indo-European nations at least. The account of which Homer left to us of the struggle to avenge the wrongs and woes of Helen is essentially a story in which the main chain of causa- tion is superhuman, in which the gods mingle visibly with men, and the heroes themselves are the sons or husbands of immortal beings. The legend of Troy was a favorite subject of the poets of the Middle Ages and took varied forms differing from the Greek version of the event and dwelling on the heros de- scended from the exiled Trojans. The excavations of Dr. Schliemann re- awakened the question of a historical basis for the Trojan War. See Troy. TROLLEY, a word originating in England applied at first to a handcart and afterward to a truck. In the United States, a trolley means a pul- ley running on an overhead wire. In electric railways this pulley is at the top of a long rod that acts as a con- ductor to transmit the electric current to the motor of a street car. By ex- tension, the word trolley is applied to the car and to the system as a whole. See Street Railways. ANTHONY TROLLOPE TROLLOPE, ANTHONY, an English novelist: born in London, England, April 24, 1815; a younger son of