Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/531

Rh N I G N I C 489 NICOBARS, a cluster of eight large and twelve small islands in the Bay of Bengal, lying to the south of the Andamans, between 6 40 and 9 20 N. lat. and between 93 and 94 E. long., with a population in 1881, exclu sive of aborigines, of 308. The largest island, the Great Nicobar, is about 30 miles in length and from 12 to 15 in breadth. Many of the islands are hilly, with peaks of con siderable height ; others are flat and covered with forests of cocoa-nut trees. All are well wooded. Tropical fruits grow in abundance, and yams of fine quality and size. The Nicobar swallow is the builder of the edible bird s nest, which, together with trepang (beche-de-mer), cocoa-nuts, tortoiseshell, and ambergris, forms the whole export of the islands. Agriculture is quite unknown. Trade is carried on by barter with the crews of English, native, and Malay vessels. The inhabitants, a race of savages with Malay- like features, had an evil reputation for piracy, and murder of the crews of vessels visiting the island or ship wrecked upon them. An inquiry by the Government of India into a case of this sort in 1869 led to the annexa tion of the whole archipelago, the administration being placed under the superintendent of the Andaman Islands. NICOL, WILLIAM, the inventor of the invaluable polarizing prism (LIGHT, vol. xiv. p. 612), was born about 1768, and died at Edinburgh in September 1851. Nothing is known of his early history, Beyond the fact that, after amassing a small competence as an itinerant popular lecturer on various parts of natural philosophy, he settled in Edinburgh to live a very retired life in the society of his apparatus alone. Besides the invention of his prism (of which we are told that he himself did not understand the mode of action), he devoted himself chiefly to the examination of fluid-filled cavities in crystals, and of the microscopic structure of various kinds of fossil wood. In the preparation of the sections of wood he introduced improvements of the utmost value. Before his time only the roughest slices were employed. His skill as a working lapidary was very great ; and he executed a number of lenses of garnet and other precious stones, which he pre ferred to the achromatic microscopes of the time. The majority of the few, though important, papers which he published are to be found in the old and new Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. NICOLAI, CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH (1733-1811), a German author and bookseller, was born on the 18th of March 1733, at Berlin, where his father was a bookseller. He was educated at a real-school in Berlin, and in 1749 went to Frankfort-on-the-Oder to learn his father s business. In 1752 he returned to Berlin, and soon began to take part in current literary controversy. At that time the leaders of critical opinion in Germany were Gottsched and Bodmer. In 1755 Nicolai issued a book, Brief e iiber den jetzigen Zustand der schonen Wissenschaften, in which he tried to show that each of these writers was in his own way narrow and intolerant. This work secured for the author the friendship of Lessing, whose power as a critic was then beginning to be recognized. In 1757 Nicolai devoted himself exclusively to literature ; but next year, after the death of his brother, who had continued the elder Nicolai s business, he found it necessary to resume the life of a bookseller. He did not, however, abandon his literary labours. In association with his friend Moses Mendelssohn he had established, in 1757, the periodical called Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften, and this he conducted until 1760. From 1761 to 1766 he contributed to the Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend ; but it Avas Lessing s work that made this series famous. For many years (from 1765 to 1791) Nicolai edited the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, a periodical which served as the organ of the so-called popular philosophers, who warred against authority in religion and against what they conceived to be extravagance in literature. The new movement of ideas represented by Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and Fichte he was in capable of understanding, and he made himself ridiculous by foolish misrepresentation of their aims. Of Nicolai s inde pendent writings, perhaps the only one of permanent value is his Anekdoten von Friedrich II. His romances are forgotten, although Leben und Meinungen des Ilerrn Magisters Sebaldus Nothanker had a certain reputation in its day. His Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz was attacked by many writers, and it proved that in middle life he had become in a new way not less bigoted than the authors whose bigotry he had spent much of his time in exposing. Nicolai died on the 8th of January 1811. He wrote an Autobiography, which was published in 1806. See Nicolai s Leben und litera- rischer Nachlass, by Gockingk (1820). NICOLAIEFF. See NIKOLAIEFF. NICOLAS, SIR NICHOLAS HARRIS (1799-1848), English antiquary, was born 10th March 1799, the fourth son of John Harris Nicolas of East Looe in Cornwall, whose Breton ancestors had settled there on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. He entered the navy in 1808, and was promoted lieutenant in 1815. At the close of the war he retired from the service and began to study for the bar. He was called at the Inner Temple in 1825, but his business as a barrister was chiefly confined to the claims of peerage before the House of Lords, his special genealogical knowledge rendering his assistance in such cases invaluable. On genealogical questions and those connected with the descent of ancient families his researches have thrown much important light. Of works on these subjects he published a considerable number, the most useful being Notitia Historica (1824 ; expanded in 1835 for &quot; Lardner s Cabinet Cyclopaedia &quot; into Chronology of History], Synoj)sis of the Peerage of England (2 vols., 1825), and Testamenta Vetusta (2 vols., 1826). Nicholas wrote a number of valu able biographical notices for Pickering s Aldine edition of the poets, among others those of Chaucer, Surrey, Wyatt, Collins, Cowper, Thomson, Burns, and Kirke White. His &quot;Lives of Isaak Walton and Charles Cotton,&quot; prefixed to Pickering s edition of the Complete Angler, are also the fruit of independent and original research. The service of Nicolas in the royal navy seems to have left an impress on his mind which his antiquarian studies tended rather to deepen than obliterate; and it is where his passion for antiquarian research was exercised in illustrating the historic glories of England and the heroic deeds of famous individuals that he found the most congenial scope for his powers. His magnum opus is his History of the Orders of Knighthood of the British Empire (4 vols., 1841-42). For his previous researches into the history of the orders he was, in 1831, made a knight of the Hanoverian Guelphic order and in 1832 chancellor of the Ionian order of St Michael and St George, and in 1840 he was advanced to the grade of the Grand Cross. In his later years Nicolas was occupied chiefly with works connected with the naval achievements of England. He published Dispatches and Letters of Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson (7 vols., 1844-46); and he was engaged until a few days before his death in editing the papers of Sir Hudson Lowe. He died at Cape Cur6, near Boulogne, August 3, 1848. Sir Harris Nicolas left an unfinished History of the British Navy, in 2 vols. He became a member of the council of the Society of Antiquaries in 1826, but on account of a controversy with the other members in regard to the management of its affairs he withdrew in 1828. Besides exposing in various pamphlets what he regarded as serious defects in its management, he made frequent reference to them in the Retrospective Revieiv, of which he was joint-editor. He also instituted an inquiry into the proceedings of the Eecord Com mission, the publications of which he regarded as not commensurate in value with the money expended on them. But, although, owing XVII. 6?