Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/714

696 G96 I C T Their food seems to have consisted chiefly of ganoid fishes and the smaller reptiles, and as the vertebrae and other remains of young ichthyosaurs have occasionally been found mixed with these, there is reason to believe that they, like many other marine animals, did not hesitate to devour the weaker members of their own species. In several instances tolerably complete skeletons of small ichthyosaurs have thus been found enclosed within the ribs of larger indi viduals of the same species, and their occurrence gave rise to the evidently erroneous conjecture that those reptiles might have been viviparous. The fact that the entombed specimens have in almost every case been found with the head turned towards the tail of the enclosing animal was supposed to favour this view ; the discovery, however, of additional specimens may at any time deprive this argument of the little value it has, and recently Professor Merian described a specimen from the Upper Lias of Wiirtemberg in which the included ichthyosaur lay with its head towards that of the enveloping specimen. The nature of their food is indicated, not only by the occurrence, in what from its position must have been the stomach, of the half-digested remains of fishes and reptiles, but also by the presence of similar relics, and especially of the scales of fishes, in their faeces. The coprolites of the ichthyosaurians are oval bodies measuring usually from 2 to 4 inches in length, and exhibiting on their surface the impression of the spirally convoluted internal surface of the intestine. These copro lites consist chiefly of phosphate of lime, and occur in great abundance in certain Liassic beds, where, says Buck- land, they look &quot; like potatoes scattered on the ground.&quot; The species of the genus Ichthyosaurus differ from each other chiefly in the proportion of certain parts of the body and of the teeth. Professor Huxley has divided them into two groups : (1) those which have relatively short snouts and short paddles, with four carpalia, including therein such forms as /. intermedius and /. communis, the latter remarkable as having its anterior paddles three times the length of the pair behind; and (2) those with longer snouts, long paddles, and three carpalia, including such forms as /. longirostris and /. temiirostris, which in the length of their snouts rival the gavial of the Ganges, and /. ^/yocfo, in which the fore and hind limbs are of equal length. ICOXIUM (Greek IKOVLOV), an ancient city of Asia Minor, now, under the name of Cogni, Konieh, Koniyeh, Konijah, or Konia, the capital of the Turkish vilayet of Caramania, is situated 310 miles east from Smyrna, at the entrance to an extensive and elevated plain which forms the centre of Asia Minor. To the eastward this plain stretches beyond the horizon, but the city is enclosed on other sides by a semicircle of snow-covered mountains. It lies at the foot of Mount Taurus, and the country immedi ately around it, watered by streams from the surrounding mountains, is occupied by fruitful gardens and orchards, forming an oasis in the midst of wide-stretching barrenness and desolation. The numerous richly adorned mosques, chapels, shrines, and monuments attest the former import ance of the city when in the zenith of its power and pro sperity, and lend additional brightness and picturesqueness to its appearance as seen from a distance ; but on closer inspection the splendour is seen to be so intermixed with squalor and decay as to degenerate into tawdriness. Ancient walls about 2 miles in circumference surround the older part of the town, but one half of the inhabited portion is outside their boundaries. These walls were built by the Seljuk sultans in the 13th century of large square blocks of stone which have evidently formed part of more ancient edifices ; and they are flanked by square towers richly adorned with cornices, demi-lions couchant, eagles with outspread wings, and Arabic inscriptions. The gateways are ornamented with alto-rilievos representing figures in procession. Great part of the space inside the walls is occupied by crumbling ruins of houses, and by dilapidated mosques half-buried in rubbish and overgrown by weeds. Of the ancient Greek city there are now no remains, but Greek inscriptions are to be found in the ancient walls erected by the Turkish conquerors, and bas-reliefs and other relics have been dug up at various periods. Modern Konieh lies to the south-west of the old town, half of it being outside the walls. The houses are one-storied, unplastered, and built mostly of sun-dried bricks and wood. Among the numerous monuments of saints and sheiks is the famous green monument of Mevlana-Djelal-eddin-Ilumi, the poet and founder of the spinning dervishes, large numbers of whom have taken up their quarters in the surrounding gardens. The most beautiful building of the city is the court mosque, with a lofty and finely tapering minaret glittering with porcelain. Of the old residence castle situated on the hill within the bound aries there are now only a few remains, great part of it having been used in building the Konak or palace of the pasha. Adjoining the ruins of the castle there is an old Byzantine chapel dedicated to St Thecla. Below the castle, and forming part of the western wall of the town, there is another fortress in a pretty good state of preservation, and for many years used as a state prison. The bazaar has a miserable appearance, and the principal goods exposed for sale are English and Swiss cottons and Nuremberg wares, the oppressive regulations of the Turkish Government in regard to the importation of salt having rendered the rearing of sheep wholly unprofitable, and thus entirely destroyed the native cloth-weaving industry. The number of dwelling-houses is about 7000, of which 150 are Armenian ; and the population numbers in all proba bility between 40,000 and 50,000. Iconium was situated on the military road between Antioch of Pisidia and Derbe. By Strabo (xii. 6, 1) it is spoken of as a small town (iroXixviov], but by Pliny (//. N., v. 25) as a very celebrated city. Xenophon (Anab., i. 2, 19) mentions it as the nearest town to Fhrygia ; but Cicero (Ad Dio., iii. 6-8; xv. 4) calls it the capital of Lycaonia; while Ammianus Marcellinus (xiv. 2) reckons it as belonging to Pisidia. In the time of Pliny its terri tory formed a tetrarchy which embraced fourteen cities, many of them of considerable size. The apostle Paul visited Iconium on his first missionary tour from Antioch, and founded a Christian community there, but on account of the hostility of the Jews he deemed it expedient to retire to Lystra. Subsequently he twice visited the city ; and it is the scene of the apocryphal story of Paul and Thecla, mentioned by many of the early fathers. About this time it became a Roman colonia, its Roman name being Claudia or Claudiconiuin. A Christian synod met at Iconium in 235. Under the rule of the Byzantine emperors the city con tinued to flourish, but in 708 it was conquered by the Arabs and incorporated in the caliphate. Having been conquered by the Sel juk Turks in 1074, Kilidj Arslan 1. in 1097 made it his resi dence, and the capital of a kingdom whose rulers were named sultans of Iconium, and which may be regarded as the cradle of the Ottoman power. On May 18, 1190, Frederick Barbarossa, after a victory over the Turks on the 7th, captured the town, but faikd to storm the castle. From 1244 the sultans were alternately deposed and reinstated by the khans of the Mongols, until the dismember ment of the sultanate on the death of Masoud II. in 1294, when their territories were added to Caramania, which in 1392 acknow ledged the sovereignty of the Porte, and in 1486 was incor porated with the Ottoman empire. On 30th December 1832 the city was the scene of a victory over the Turks by Ibrahim Pasha. See Kinneir, Travels in Asia Minor; Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor ; Leake, Geography of Asia Minor ; Chesney, Euphrates Expedition ; Texier, Asie Mincurc ; and E. Sherling in the Berlin Zcitschriftfiir alhjcmeine Erdkunde for 1864. ICONOCLASTS. See IMAGE WORSHIP. ICTERUS, a bird so called by classical authors, and supposed by Pliny to be the same as the Galgulus, which nearly all writers agree in considering to be what we now know as the Golden Oriole (Oriolus galbula). 1 At any 1 The number of names by which this species was known in ancient times Chloris or Chlorion, Galbula (akin to Galguhis), Parra, and