Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/231

Rh S A L S A L 211 ally built in 1824 by the East India Marine Society (1799), which consisted of captains and supercargoes who had doubled either Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope; and the building now contains under the trusteeship of the academy the collections of the old East India Museum and those of the Essex Institute, illustrating the zoology, natural history, and archaeology of the county. The ethno- graphical collections, such as that dealing with Corea, are especially valuable. The American Naturalist has been the organ of the academy since 1867. The Peabody Institute, not to be confounded with the academy, is in the village of Peabody (Danvers), about 2 miles distant from Salem and about mid way between the house in which the philanthropist was born and the grave, in Harmony Grove cemetery, in which he was buried. Plummer Hall, a fine building in Essex Street, erected in 1856 out of funds left to the Salem Athenaeum by Miss Plummer, contains the libraries of the Athenaeum, the Essex Institute (founded in 1848 by the union of the Essex Historical and the Essex County Natural History Societies), and the Essex South District Medical Society, making an aggregate of 50,000 volumes. Behind this hall is the frame of the oldest church edifice in New England, erected in 1634 for Roger Williams. Other buildings of note in Salem are a State normal school, the city hall, the court-houses, the custom-house, in which Nathaniel Hawthorne once acted as surveyor of the port, and several of the private houses (such as " Dr Grimshawe's house," the dwelling occupied for several years by Dr Peabody, Mrs Hawthorne's father) which, while not exactly prototypes, have lent much of their verisimilitude to the localities of Hawthorne's fiction. The novelist was born at 21 Union Street. Salem had 24,117 inhabitants in 1870, and 27,563 in 1880. Naumkeag (Eel Land) was the Indian name of the district in which Salem stands, and is still used familiarly by the inhabitants. The first house was built by Roger Conants from Cape Ann in 1626, and two years later a settlement was formed by John Endicott and called Salem, "from the peace they had and hoped in it." In 1630 Governor John Winthrop introduced a large body of colonists from England, including the brave and beautiful Arabella Johnson, < laughter of the earl of Lincoln, who died shortly afterwards. In 1661 the Quakers were persecuted at Salem, and in 1692 the town was the scene of Cotton Mather's terrible proceedings against witch- craft : nineteen persons were hanged on Gallows Hill and Giles Cory was pressed to death. It was in Salem that in 1774 the house of representatives of Massachusetts resolved themselves into a sovereign political power. The town obtained a city charter in 1836. Few cities of the United States have given more eminent men to the world Timothy Pickering, secretary of state (1795-1800), General Israel Putnam, F. T. Ward of China celebrity, John Rogers and W. W. Story the sculptors, Bowditch and B. Peirce the astro- nomers and mathematicians, Maria S. Cummins the novelist, W. H. Prescott the historian, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. SALEM, a city of the United States, the county seat of Salem county, New Jersey, on a small stream of the same name, by which it has steam communication with Phil- adelphia (on the Delaware), 44 miles distant to the north- north-east by rail. While Salem depends mainly on the agricultural prosperity of the surrounding district, it also contains foundries and machine-shops, fruit-canning estab- lishments, glass-ware factories, oil-cloth factories, &c. The population was 3052 in 1850, 4555 in 1870, and 5056 in 1880. A colony settled on the site of Salem in 1641 was replaced by a Swedish fort, and this passed through the Dutch to the English. One of the Quakers who in 1673 bought Lord Berkeley's half of New Jersey gave the place its present name and restored the settle- ment, which in 1682 was declared a port of entry. In 1778 the town was plundered by Colonel Manhood. SALEM, a city of the United States, the capital of Oregon, in Marion county, on the east bank of Willamette river, 53 miles south of Portland by the Oregon and California Railroad. It lies in a fertile prairie district, adorned with copses, and possesses a good source of water- power in Mill Creek. The capitol, a rather imposing edifice with a tower 180 feet high, erected in 1875-76, occupies a fine site above the city ; other public buildings are the Willamette University (Methodist), which grants degrees in medicine, science, and general literature, the opera-house, the Roman Catholic school for girls, the State penitentiary, and State schools for the deaf and dumb and the blind. Lumber, woollen goods, flour, leather, brass castings, furni- ture, linseed oil, and building materials are the chief articles of manufacture and trade. The population was 2538 in 1880. Settled in 1834, incorporated in 1853, Salem be- came the State capital in 1860. SALEP (Arab, sahleb, Gr. opx 1 ?), a drug extensively used in the East as a nervine restorative and fattener, and also much prescribed in paralytic affections, probably owed its original popularity to the belief in the so-called " doctrine of signatures." In Europe it is chiefly used as a demulcent drink, but is also supposed to possess nutrient properties ; it may be employed with advantage in inflammatory condi- tions of the mucous membrane, as in bronchitis, diarrhoea, cystitis, and other urinary disorders. It consists of the tuberous roots of various species of Orchis and Uulophia, which are decorticated, washed, heated until horny in ap- pearance, and then carefully dried. The most important constituent of salep is a kind of mucilage which it yields to cold water to the extent of 48 per cent. This mucilage in its chemical reactions is more nearly allied to cellulose than to gum, since when dry it is readily soluble in ammoniacal solution of copper ; when boiled with nitric acid it yields oxalic but not mucic acid. Salep also con- tains sugar and albumen, and when fresh traces of a volatile oil ; dried at 100 C. it yields 2 per cent, of ash, chiefly the phosphates and chlorides of potassium and calcium. Salep was formerly imported into Europe from the Levant, but in 1760 the French chemist Geoffroy discovered its true nature and showed how it might be prepared from the species of Orchis indi- genous to France. That used in Germany is obtained from plants growing wild in the Taunus Mountains, the Westerwald, the Rhb'n, the Odenwald, and Franconia. Grecian salep is chiefly collected in Macedonia. In Asia Minor the tubers are collected near Melassa and Mughla, and about 330 tons are annually exported from Smyrna. The salep of the Bombay market, which is imported principally from Persia, Cabul, and northern India, occurs in three forms, palmate, large ovoid, and small ovoid tubers on strings, all more or less horny and translucent. Salep is also produced on the Nilgiri (Neilgherry) Hills and in Ceylon. Besides the above-men- tioned forms, elongated cylindrical tubers, usually in pairs and undecorticated, are occasionally met with. The palmate tubers are the most highly esteemed, being valued at ten rupees per pound. This variety is known in the Bombay market as Persian salep. It is probably derived chiefly from 0. latifolia, L., although 0. macu- lata, L., 0. saccifera, Brongn., and 0. conopsea, L., also afford pal- mate tubers. The species known to yield ovate salep are 0. mascula, 0. Morio, 0. pyramidalis, 0. ustulata, 0, inilitaris, 0. coriophora, L., and 0. longicruris, Link. All these species are natives of the greater part of central and southern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus, and Asia Minor, 0. latifolia extending to western India and Tibet and 0. conopsea to the Amur, in the extreme east of Asia. Salep is not easily reduced to powder, being both hard and tough, and is therefore usually ground between millstones. This difficulty is said to be lessened if the salep is first soaked in cold water until soft and then rapidly dried. As the powder does not mix readily with water, the authors of Pharmacographia (2d ed. p. 656) recommend that it should be first mixed with 1 parts of rectified spirits of wine (brandy or other strong spirit would answer equally well), 40 parts of cold water being then added quickly and the mixture boiled. In these proportions salep affords a thick jelly. SALERNO, a city of Italy and the chief town of a pro- vince of its own name (formerly Principato Citeriore), is beautifully situated on the west coast 34 miles south-east of Naples, and presents a fine appearance with the ruins of its old Norman castle on an eminence 905 feet above the sea and its background of graceful limestone hills. The town walls were destroyed in the beginning of the 19th cen- tury ; the seaward portion has given place to the Corso Garibaldi, the principal promenade. Among the con- spicuous buildings are the theatre, the prefecture, and the