Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/811

Rh 761 Z Zthe last letter of our alphabet, has fallen away from , its old place in the Phoenician and Greek alphabets. In these it stood seventh, probably with the value of dz or zd. In shape it was I in all the older writings both of the Ionian and the Eubcean type. Later it became Z, as we have it, by a natural and convenient change. But I is the older Italian as well as the Greek form ; it remained so in Oscan ; in Etruscan and Umbrian the cross strokes were brought near together, but the upright line remained. The Latin alphabet, however, dropped the symbol, having apparently no need of it ; it appears on an old coin of Cosa (Corpus, i. 14), unless the letter there be only a modified s. Later, in the 1st century B.C., the letter in the form Z was re-introduced, Avhere we have it, to represent more accurately the sound of z in words borrowed from the Greek, in which alone it appears ; ss (or initial s) had previously been employed for this purpose. The original place of the letter had been occupied in the meantime by G, the Latin modified form of C (see under G), so Z had to take the lowest place together with Y, which had been also borrowed from Greece for a similar purpose. The exact value of zeta in Greek has been much dis cussed (see Blass, Aussprache des Griechischen, p. 95). That it was a double sound not French z (the voiced sibilant corresponding to the voiceless s] seems clear from Aris totle s statement that, ^, and were all O-V/^WFICU, and from its power of lengthening a previous short vowel in scanning. The arguments, however, for the dz or the zd value are about evenly balanced, and it is not improbable that it may have had both. In Latin the value was doubt less that of the Greek z. In Old English z hardly occurs ; when it does it is in borrowed names with the value of ts, as in Betzaida, Zabulon. It was introduced in order to represent French z in words borrowed from France, as zeal, zone (see article S). But it is used in only a very small number of the words where the sound occurs : we still adhere to the usage of our fore fathers and employ s for the s-sound and the 2-sound alike, indeed rather inclining to use s for z, and to differentiate s by doubling the symbol : compare his (i.e., hiz) and hiss (i.e., his). In German z represents ts, the sound into which Teutonic t passed in High German e.g., mherz, our &quot;heart.&quot; It was also used formerly, either alone or in combination with s, to denote the voiceless sibilant when final : thus the conjunction dass, which is nothing but the neuter pronoun das, was formerly written daz, and is sometimes even now written dasz. In French the Latin z became the voiced sibilant; and a similar process has taken place in modern Greek. In French, however, the final sound must once have been stronger e.g., in Jils (filius), later fiz, and still later fis (as it is still pronounced), which passed into England in the form Fitz in proper names. Still plainer is the evidence of verbal forms like avez = avets = habetis. For the history of the English variant 5 for z, see article Y. (j. p.) ZAANDAM, ZAANREDAM, or SAARDAM, a village of Hol land, in the province of North Holland, 5 miles by rail to the north-west of Amsterdam, at the confluence of the Zaan with the Y. The houses are mostly of wood, painted white or green, and the place shares with the other villages of North Holland a high reputation for neatness and cleanliness. In the immediate neighbourhood are a very large number of windmills, including corn, paper, saw, coffee, snuff, and other mills. Peter the Great of Russia wrought at Zaandam as a ship-carpenter for a short time in 1G97, and the hut in which he is said to have lived is still shown and much visited. Some shipbuilding is still carried on. The population in 1887 was 14,351. ZACATECAS, a city of Mexico, capital of the state of the same name, lies 340 miles by rail north-west of Mexico, in 22 46 N. lat. and 102 W. long. Zacatecas, which had a population of 46,000 in 1886, is the centre of one of the oldest and most productive silver-mining districts in the republic, and the town itself stands on the rich vein discovered here by Juan de Tolosa in 1546. It lies on the great Mexican tableland, 7976 feet above the sea, in a narrow ravine surrounded by rolling hills, all containing almost inexhaustible deposits of the precious metal. Within half an hour s walk of the centre of the town are situated twelve mines, some of which have been worked with little interruption for over three hundred years. Owing to the irregular nature of the ground and the great value of the land, the city is laid out in narrow tortuous streets, which, unlike most other Mexican towns, are lined by high houses of three and four stories. Noteworthy amongst the public buildings are the cathedral, with a finely sculptured fagade, the Government palace, the city hall, the theatre, and the mint; this last, during the period from 1772 to 1865, issued silver money to the value of 41,000,000, besides &amp;lt;! 10,000 in gold. The streets, although narrow, are well paved and partly lit by electricity. Since the completion of the Central Mexican Railway to this place in 1884 it has increased in population and prosperity. From the Bufa Hill, 500 feet high, lying to the north of the city, an ex tensive view is commanded of the surrounding district, which is of an extremely rugged character and almost destitute of vegetation. In the neighbourhood are nine small lakes, yielding an abundance of salt and carbonate of soda. Zacatecas, which received the title of city from Philip II. in 1585, is supplied with water by a large, well- constructed aqueduct. The state of Zacatecas lies between Coahuila and Jalisco north and south respectively, and is elsewhere conterminous with Guana juato, Durango, and San Luis Potosi. It lias an area of 25,227 square miles and a population (1882) of 422,506, of whom a pre ponderating proportion are Indians or mestizos. It stands at a mean altitude of over 7000 feet above sea-level, and is traversed by the Mazapil, Norillos, Guadaloupe, and other metalliferous ranges, this state ranking among the first in the republic for mineral wealth. Next to the Veta Madre of Guanajuato and the famous Comstock lode, Nevada, the Veta Grande of Zacatecas is held to be the most remarkable silver vein in North America. The chief mining dis tricts are Zacatecas, Espiritu Santo, Chapala, Los Arcos, Norias, Ipala, Santa Lucia, Naranjal, and Santo Martino ; and in 1886 about 324 mines were open (21 gold, 67 gold and silver, 167 silver alone, 15 copper, 37 lead, and 16 quicksilver). Besides its minerals the state possesses considerable agricultural resources, the south eastern parts especially being very fertile and well watered by the rivers Tlaltenango and Juchipila. Maize, wheat, fruits such as peaches, apricots, grapes, and all kinds of vegetables are extensively cultivated, the annual maize crop being valued at over 1,000,000, wheat at about 250,000, and the remaining crops at about 600,000. Even in the bleak and arid northern districts there are some exten sive grazing-grounds, where cattle, horses, mules, sheep, and gouts thrive well. Some of the slopes are well timbered, the chief species being the mountain cedar, oak, elm, ash, and cotton-wood. Be sides the capital, the chief mining towns are Fresnillo (pop. 15,000), Garcia (8000), Villanueva (7000), Linos (7000),. Sombrerete (6000), and Nieves (3000). ZACH, FRANZ XAVKR, BARON VON (1754-1832), astronomer, was born at Pesth in June 1754. He served for some time in the Austrian army, and afterwards lived in London from 1783 to 1786 as tutor in the house of the Saxon minister, Count Briihl. In 1786 he was appointed by Ernest II. of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha director of the new observatory on the Secberg at Gotha, which was finished in 1791. From 1806 Zach accompanied the duke s widow XXIV. --96