Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/200

Rh Forbes and Hanley, ''Brit. Mollusca, 1853; B. Hatschek, Entwicklung v. Teredo: Arbeiten aus dem Zool. Inst. Wien, 1880; Deshayes, Mollusques d'Algerié; Sir E. Home, "Anatomy of Teredo," in Phil. Trans., vol. xcvi.; Frey and Leuckart, Beiträge zur Kenutniss wirbelloser Teredo, 1847; Woodward, Manual of Mollusca'', London, 1851.

 TEREK (Russ. Terskaya oblast), a Russian government of Caucasia, situated to the north of the main Caucasus chain. It is bounded by Stavropol on the N., by the Caspian Sea and Daghestan on the E., by Tiflis and Kutais on the S., and by Tchernomorsk and Kuban on the W. It has an area of 23,548 square miles. From Mt Elburz to Kazbek the southern boundary coincides with the main snow-covered range of the Caucasus and thus includes its highest peaks; further east it follows a sinuous line so as to embrace the secondary chains and their ramifications. Nearly one-third of the area is occupied by hilly tracts, the remainder being undulating and flat land belonging to the depression of the Terek; one-half of this last, on the left bank of the river, is occupied by sandy deserts, salt clay steppes, and arid stretches unsuited for cultivation. Granites, syenites, diorites, and Palæozoic schists constitute the nucleus of the Caucasus mountains; Jurassic and Cretaceous formations rise to great heights in the secondary chains; and a series of Tertiary formations, covered by Quaternary deposits, cover a wide area in the prairies and steppes. A group of mineral springs occurs about (q.v.)

The climate is continental. The mean annual temperatures are 49·6 Fahr. at Pyatigorsk (1850 feet above the sea; January 39°, July 70°) and 47°·7 at Vładikavkaz (2230 ft; January 23°, July 69°), but frosts a few degrees below zero are not uncommon. The mountain slopes receive an abundance of rain (37 in.), but the steppes suffer much from drought (rainfall between 10 and 20 in. ). Nearly the whole of the government belongs to the drainage area of the Terek, but the north-west corner is watered by the upper tributaries of the Kuma. The Terek rises at the height of about 8000 feet in the glaciers of the Kazbek on the southern slope of the main chain of the Caucasus, which it pierces by the Darial gorge to the south of Vładikavkaz after having received several dons or streams (Res, Guzel, Fiag, Ar). In 53 miles it descends nearly 6000 feet. A few miles above Vładikavkaz it is 2068 feet above sea-level, at Mozdok 441 feet, and it is 29 feet below the Black Sea at Kizlyar. From Vładikavkaz it pursues a north-easterly direction before taking its eastward course; it seems most probable that at a recent epoch (Post-Pliocene) it joined the Kuma and perhaps the Manytch instead of flowing into the Caspian. In the lower part of its course it flows at a higher level than that of the neighbouring plains, and is kept in its bed by dams. Inundations are frequent and cause great destruction. The delta begins at Dubovka (50 miles from the Caspian), and at this part the river frequently changes its bed. The Old Terek is no longer navigable, the chief current being directed northwards into the New Terek. Several canals made by the Cossacks supply water for the irrigation of the neighbouring fields. Its chief tributaries are the Sunja on the right, and the Tcherekh, the Baksan, and the Malka, in its upper course, on the left. The population of the government in 1884 was 615,660; of 606,500 inhabitants returned in 1883, 238,230 were Little and Great Russians, 1230 Georgians, 18,500 Armenians, 4300 Germans, 2570 Poles, 4780 Jews, 23,630 Ossets, 194,480 Tchetchens and Ingushis, 72,160 Kabardians, 9130 mountaineers of the Avarian stem, 25,360 Kumyks, 1770 Tatars, 6270 Nogais, 2470 Kalmucks, and 1620 Persians. Out of these 239,500 were reckoned as belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church, 336,460 were Mussulmans, 17,730 Gregorian Armenians, and the remainder Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Owing to the great fertility of the soil in the well-watered districts, agriculture is the chief occupation. In 1882 the crops, although below the average, yielded 967,000 quarters of corn, 268,000 bushels of potatoes, 6,750,000 gallons of wine, and tobacco to the value of £18,000. Cattle breeding is extensively carried on in the steppes, and there were in the same year 118,630 horses, 582,800 cattle, and 1,226,400 sheep; murrains, however, are frequent, and cause great loss. Manufactures occupy only 3371 persons, and their yearly production hardly reaches £300,000 in value. Petty trades are rapidly spreading in the villages. Trade suffers from want of good roads. The railway from Russia to the Caucasus has not yet (1887) got beyond Vładikavkaz. The military and other chief roads have an aggregate of only 1300 miles. The exports are limited to corn, wine, cattle, and some raw produce.

The government is divided into six districts, the chief towns of which, with their populations in 1883, were Vładikavkaz (32,340), the capital, Georgievsk (4250), Groznyi (6280), Kizlyar (8780), Mozdok (8380), and Pyatigorsk (11,120).

 TERENCE. P. Terentius Afer (185?–159 ) holds a unique position among Roman writers. No writer in any literature has gained so great a reputation who has contented himself with so limited a function. He lays no claim to the position of an original artist painting from life or commenting on the results of his own observation. His art has no relation to his own time or to the country in which he lived. The chief source of interest in the fragmentary remains of Nævius, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and Lucilius is their relation to the national and moral spirit of the age in which they were written. Plautus, though, like Terence, he takes the first sketch of his plots, scenes, and characters from the Attic stage, is yet a true representative of his time, a genuine Italian, writing before the genius of Italy had learned the restraints of Greek art. The whole aim of Terence was to present a faithful copy of the life, manners, modes of thought and expression which had been drawn from reality a century before his time by the writers of the New Comedy of Athens. The nearest parallel to his literary position may be found in the aim which Virgil puts before himself in his Bucolics. He does not seek in that poem to draw Italian peasants from the life, but to bring back the shepherds of on Italian scenes. Yet the result obtained by is different. The charm of his pastorals is the Italian sentiment which pervades them. His shepherds are not the shepherds of Theocritus, nor are they in any sense true to life. The extraordinary result obtained by Terence is that, while he has left no trace in any of his comedies of one sketching from the life by which he was surrounded, there is perhaps no more truthful, natural, and delicate delineator of human nature, in its ordinary and more level moods, within the whole range of classical literature. His permanent position in literature is due, no doubt, to the art and genius of Menander, whose creations he has perpetuated, as a fine engraver may perpetuate the spirit of a great painter whose works have perished. But no mere copyist or verbal translator could have attained that result. Though without claims to creative originality, Terence must have had not only critical genius, to enable him fully to appreciate and identify himself with his originals, but artistic genius of a high and pure type. The importance of his position in Roman literature consists in this, that he was the first writer who set before himself a high ideal of artistic perfection, and was the first to realize that perfection in style, form, and consistency of conception and execution. Living in the interval between and, whose original force and genius survive only in rude and inartistic fragments, he produced six plays, which have not only reached our time in the form in which they were given to the world, but have been read in the most critical and exacting literary epochs, and still may be read without any feeling of the need of making allowance for the rudeness of a new and undeveloped art.

While his great gift to Roman literature is that he first made it artistic, that he imparted to "rude Latium" the sense of elegance, consistency, and moderation, his gift to the world is that through him it possesses a living image of the Greek society in the 3d century, presented in the purest Latin idiom. Yet Terence had no affinity by birth either with the Greek race or with the people of Latium. He was more distinctly a foreigner than any of the great classical writers of Rome. He lived at the meeting-point of three distinct civilizations, the mature, or rather decaying, civilization of Greece, of which Athens was still the centre; that of Carthage, which was so soon to pass away and leave scarcely any vestige of itself; and the nascent civilization of Italy, in which all other modes were soon to be absorbed. Terence was by birth a Phœnician,