Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/787

Rh The total number now in che Russian empire may be esti mated at 120,000. In the Chinese territory, where they ire known as Eliots, or Gluts, their numbers are consider able, but are not precisely known.

1em  CALNE, a town of England, in the county of Wiltshire, connected with the Great Western railway system by a branch line opened in 1863, and situated about 16 mile^ directly east of Bath. It stands in a valley intersected by the little brook of Galne, and is surrounded by the high table-land of Maiiborough Downs and Salisbury Plain. The town is clean and well paved, and contains an ancient church (St Mark s) with a tower by Inigo Jones, and a town-house considerably enlarged by the marquis of Lansdowue, whose seat of Bo wood is about two miles distant. The educational establishments include Bentley s grammar school founded in 1660, national and infant schools, and an institution for training female servants, which was endowed by Mrs Guthrie, to whom the town is also indebted for a children s hospital. The principal trade of Calne is the curing of bacon ; and there are also flax- mills, paper-mills, and flour-mills in operation. The manufacture of broad cloth, at one time of great importance, is almost extinct. Calne formerly returned two members to parliament, but the number is now reduced to one. Population of the municipal borough in 1871, 2468, and of the parliamentary, 5315. From the remains found in the vicinity, Calne seems to have been an important Roman station. It was the occasional residence of the West Saxon kings ; and is celebrated in legendary ecclesiastical history for the escape of Dunstan at the synod held there in 997.  CALOMEL, mercurous chloride, or subchloride of mercury (HgCl), is a compound of mercury of great value in medicine. It occurs native as horn quicksilver in the mercury mines of Idria, at Obermoschel, in Bavaria, Horowitz in Bohemia, and Almaden in Spain, in the form of translucent tetragonal crystals, with an adamantine lustre, and a dirty white grey or brownish colour. A great number of processes are available for the preparation of calomel for pharmaceutical purposes. The directions of the British Pharmacopoeia are as follows : Sulphate of mercury 10 oz., mercury 7 oz., common salt 5 oz., and boiling distilled water. The sulphate of mercury is to be moistened with part of the water, and it and the mercury rubbed up together until all metallic globules disappear. The salt is then added, and the whole thoroughly triturated, after which it is sublimed in a vessel of such capacity that the calomel, instead of forming a crystalline crust on the sides as it would do in a vessel of small dimensions, shall fall in the form of a fine impalpable powder on the floor of the receiver. The sublimate is to be washed until the washings cease to be darkened on the addition of a drop of sulphide of ammonium. The reaction in the above case may be represented thus : HgSO 4 + Hg + 2NaCl ? Na 2 S0 4 + 2HgCl. After thorough washing the calomel has to be dried at a temperature not exceeding 212 Fahr., and preserved in a jar away from the light, exposure to which darkens it by partial decomposition into corrosive sublimate HgCl 2 and metallic mercury. Calomel when so prepared is a dull, heavy, white, nearly tasteless powder, which is rendered yellowish by trituration in a mortar or when heated. It is entirely insoluble in water, alcohol, or ether, and volatilizes, below a red heat, without fusion. When sublimed in a confined chamber it forms a crust or cake, the inner surface of which is covered with crystals in fine quadrangular prisms, having a transparent dirty-white appearance. Calomel is one of the mildest and most frequently employed of all mercurial preparations, producing its effects with little local irritation. It exercises a powerful influence on the secreting organs, stimulating the liver and intestinal glands to increased activity, on which account it is much relied on in cases of functional derangement of the liver. It is usually combined with other remedial agents, each exercising an influence in modifying the effect or increasing the activity of the other. Thus as a purgative it is com bined with jalap, scammony, colocynth, atid other similar substances. The much used Plummer s pill, which is essentially the same as the compound calomel pill of the British Pharmacopoeia, contains in addition to calomel an equal weight of oxysulphide of antimony, with guaiacum and castor oil. It is employed both in Europe and America as an alterative in chronic skin diseases, in liver affections, and in disorders of the digestive system. On account of its tastelessness calomel is a convenient aperient for children, who however appear to be less susceptible to its effects than adults. It has been used in very large doses in the treatment of cholera ; and it is a convenient medium for producing salivation. Suspended in gum or glycerine water it has been used for hypodermic injection ; and in the form of an ointment it is one of the most useful of external applications in the case of obstinate skin diseases.  CALONNE, (1734-1802), a French statesman, was born at Douai in 1734. He was descended from a good family and entered the profession of the law, in which he rapidly attained success. He became in succession advocate to the general council of Artois, procureur to the parliament of Douai, and finally master of requests, a dignity which gave him the right of sitting in the general council. He seems to have been a man of great business capacity, gay and careless in tempera ment, and thoroughly unscrupulous in political action. In the terrible crisis of affairs preceding the French Revolu tion, when minister after minister tried in vain to replenish the exhausted royal treasury and was dismissed for want of success, Calonne was summoned to take the general control of affairs. He assumed office in 1783, and at first everything seemed to prosper. Money flowed in readily, and the gaiety of the minister gave courage to the court. But his prosperity was hollow and rested on no secure foundation. Calonne had levied taxes until it was impossible to extract more from the impoverished people. He had borrowed till his credit was entirely gone, and he at last found himself compelled to disclose to the king the true state of affairs, and to lay before him what in his opinion was the only measure that could restore France. The first step in this proposed plan was the convocation of the notables, and the writs summoning them were issued in December 1786. On the 22d February of the following year Calonne disclosed to the notables his anxiously expected scheme for reconstituting the finances. The main provisions of this plan were the redistribution of the taxes, so that the whole might not fall on the unprivileged classes, the imposition of a land tax on the revenues of the nobles, and of a similar tax on the incomes of the clergy, and the abolition of corvees and the yabelle. All Calonne s eloquence could not succeed in rendering this scheme palatable either to the notables or to the people. The noblesse and clergy strenuously resisted any attempt to infringe upon their privileges, and the people were begin ning to feel that in a convocation assembled to settle the affairs of France the nation itself had no part. Calonne had opened the floodgates, and was powerless to resist the torrent. His fall, however, was primarily due to the 