Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/889

Rh R O S K S 855 tioned the three according to tradition marking the burial-places of the three sons of a Danislikmg. The largest, at Shandwick, Clach- a-c/wtrridh, or the "Stone of Lamentation," was blown down in a storm in 1847 and broken into three pieces ; a smaller one at Kigg churchyard, struck down by the fall of the belfry in 1725, has been re-erected and fenced round ; and the third, which formerly stood at Cadboll of Hilltown has been removed for- preservation to the grounds of Invergordon Castle. An ancient vitrified fort, 420 feet by 120, crowns the hill of Knockfarrel in Fodderty parish. Among old castles are those of Lochslin, in the parish of F earn, said to date from the 13th century, which, though very ruinous, still pos- sesses two square towers in good preservation ; Balone, in the parish of Tarbat, said to have been built by the earls of Ross ; and the remains of Dingwall Castle, the earls of Ross's original seat. Of the abbey of Fearn, transferred from Edderton in 1338, and interesting as having had for its tenth abbot the Reformer Patrick Hamilton, the abbey church, much altered, is still used as the parish church. There are a very large number of fine modern mansions. EOSS, SIR JAMES CLARK (1800-1862), arctic voyager, was born in London 15th April 1800. He entered the navy in 1812 under his uncle Sir John Ross (see below), whom lie accompanied in his first voyage in search of a north-west passage. From 1819 to 1825, and again in 1827, he was engaged with Captain Parry in his voyages. He served under his uncle from 1829 to 1833, discovering the position of the north magnetic pole on 1st June 1831 (see POLAR REGIONS, vol. xix. p. 320). He commanded the expedition in the "Erebus" and "Terror" to the Antarctic seas from 1839 to 1843, and after his return he received in 1844 the honour of knighthood. In 1847 he published A Narrative of a Voyage in the Antarctic Regions, 2 vols. His last expedition was in 1848 in the "Enter- prise " to Baffin's P>ay in search of Sir John Franklin. He died at Aylesbury,*3d April 1862. ROSS, SIR JOHN (1777-1856), arctic voyager, was the fourth son of the Rev. Andrew Ross, minister of Inch, Wigtonshire, where he was born in 1777. He entered the navy in 1786. In 1818 he sailed in command of an Arctic expedition (see POLAR REGIONS, vol. xix. p. 319), an account of which he published, under the title Voyage of Discovery for the Purpose of Exploring Baffin's Bay, in 1819. In 1829, through the munificence of his friend Sir Felix Booth, he was able to undertake a second expedition (see vol. xix. p. 320). Shortly after his return in 1833 he was knighted, made C.B., and elected a member of many learned societies. In accordance with a promise made to Sir John Franklin, he undertook a third expedition in 1850 and remained one winter on the ice, but accomplished nothing. His own account of the causes of his failure is given in a pamphlet published in 1855. He died 31st August 1856. Ross "also wrote A Treatise on Navigation l>y Steam, 1828 ; Me- moirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord De Saumarez, 1838 ; Arctic Expedition, 1850 ; and several other minor works. ROSSANO, a city of Italy, in the province of Cosenza, most picturesquely situated on a precipitous spur of the great mountain mass of Sila (geologically the oldest part of Italy) overlooking the Gulf of Taranto. The railway station, 93 miles from Taranto, is about an hour from the town. Rossano is the seat of an archbishop and the centre of a circondario ; marble and alabaster quarries are worked in the neighbourhood ; and the inhabitants num- bered 14,688 in 1881 (17,979 in the commune). In the cathedral is preserved the Codex Rossanensis, an uncial MS. of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark (6th century) in silver characters on purple vellum, with twelve minia- tures, of great interest in the history of Byzantine art. Mentioned in the Itineraries, Rossano (Roscianum) appears under the Latin empire as one of the important fortresses of Calabria. Totila took it in 548. The people showed great attach- ment to the Byzantine empire, and the Greek rite was maintained in the cathedral till the time of the Angevins. In the 14th century Rossano was made a principality for the great family of De Baux. Passing to the Sforza, and thus to Sigismund of Poland, it was ultimately in 1558 united to the crown of Naples by Philip II. of Spain in virtue of a doubtful will by Bona of Poland in favour of Giovanni Lorenzo Pappacoda. Under Isabella of Aragon and Bona of Poland the town had been a centre of literary culture ; but under the Spaniards it rapidly declined even in the matter of population (2256 households in 1561, 1177 in 1669). The crown sold the lordship in 1612 to the Aldobrandini, and from them it passed to the Borghesi and the Caraffa. Rossauo is best known as the birthplace of St Kilns the younger, whose life is the most valuable source of information extant in regard to the state of matters in southern Italy in the 10th century. Pope John VII. (705-707) was also a native of the town. See Lenonnant, La Grande- Greet, vol. i. ROSSE, WILLIAM PARSONS, THIRD EARL OF (1800- 1867), the distinguished constructor of reflecting telescopes, was born at York on June 17, 1800, a son of the second earl, who as Sir Lawrence Parsons, Bart., had been a pro- minent member of the Irish Parliament. Until his father's death (1841) he was known as Lord Oxmantown. He was M.P. for King's County from 1821 to 1834, Irish represen- tative peer from 1845, president of the Royal Society from 1848 to 1854, and chancellor of the university of Dublin from 1862. From 1827 he devoted himself to the improvement of reflecting telescopes; in 1839 he mounted a telescope of 3 feet aperture at his seat, Birr Castle, Parsonstown ; and in 1845 his celebrated 6-foot reflector was finished. Owing to the famine and the disturbed state of the country, which demanded his attention as a large landowner and lieutenant of King's County, the instrument remained unused for nearly three years, but since 1848 it has been in constant use, chiefly for observa- tions of nebulae, for which it was particularly suited on account of its immense optical power. Lord Rosse died on October 31, 1867. The first constructor of reflecting telescopes on a large scale, William Herschel, never published anything about his methods of casting and polishing specula, and he does not appear to have been very successful beyond specula of 18 inches diameter, his 4- foot speculum ("the 40-foot telescope") having been very little used by him (about this question see an interesting discussion between Sir J. Herschel and Robinson in The Athenaeum, Nos. 831-36, 1843, which deserves to be rescued from oblivion). Lord Rosse had therefore no help whatever in working his way from a small beginning to the brilliaut results he achieved. His speculum metal is composed of four equivalents of copper and one of tin, a very brilliant alloy, which resists tarnish better than any other compound tried. Chiefly owing to the extreme brittleness of this material, Lord Rosse's first larger specula were composed of a number of thin plates of speculum metal (sixteen for a 3-foot mirror) soldered on the back of a strong but light framework made of a peculiar kind of brass (2 '75 of copper to 1 of zinc), which has the same expansion as his speculum metal. In Brewster's Edinburgh Journal of Science for 1828 he described his machine for polishing the speculum, which in all essential points remained unaltered afterwards. It imitates the motions made in polishing a speculum by hand by giving both a rectilinear and a lateral motion to the polisher, while the speculum revolves slowly ; by shifting two eccentric pins the course of the polisher can be varied at will from a straight line to an ellipse of very small eccentricity, and a true parabolic figure can thus be obtained. The speculum lies face upwards in a shallow bath of water (to preserve a uniform tempera- ture), and the polisher fits loosely in a ring, so that the rotation of the speculum makes it revolve also, but more slowly. Both the grinding and polishing tools are grooved, to obtain a uniform dis- tribution of the emery used in the grinding process and of the rouge employed in polishing, as also to provide for the lateral expansion of the pitch with which the polisher is coated. In September 1839 a 3-foot speculum was finished and mounted on an altazimuth stand similar to Herschel's ; but, though the definition of the images was good (except that the diffraction at the joints of the speculum caused minute rays in the case of a very bright star), and its peculiar skeleton form allowed the speculum to follow atmospheric changes of temperature very quickly, Lord Rosse decided to cast a solid 3-foot speculum. Hitherto it had been felt as a great difficulty in casting specula that the solidification did not begin at one surface and proceed gradually to the other, the common sand mould allowing the edges to cool first, so that the central parts were subject to great straining when their time of cooling came, and in large castings this generally caused cracking. By forming the bottom of the mould of hoop iron placed on edge and closely packed, and the sides of sand, while the top was left open, Lord Rosse overcame this difficulty, and the hoop iron had the further advantage of allowing the gas developed during the cooling to escape, thus preventing the speculum from being full of