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90 for military manoeuvres, as well as numerous fountains and planted walks. As chief town of a department, and the seat of a bishop, Carcassonne contains court-houses and various public offices, an episcopal palace, and a theological seminary ; and among its other public buildings and insti tutions may be mentioned the new cathedral of St Michael, the town-hall, the library with upwards of 15,000 volumes, the exchange, the theatre, the barracks, the hospitals, the college, the school of design, the museum, the chamber of commerce, and the agricultural society. Of the various in dustrial establishments the most important are the woollen factories, not less than 2000 people being engaged in the manufacture of cloth, which is chiefly exported to the Levant, Barbary, and South America. Wadding, paper, leather, pottery, and iron wares are also produced; and there is a trade in wine, brandy, and fruit. A large fair is held in November and another on Whit-Tuesday. Population in 1872, 20,808 in the town, and 23,644 in the commune.

1em  CARDAMOM, the fruit of several plants of the genera Elettaria and Amomum, belonging to the natural order Zingiberacece, the principal of which is Elettaria Cardamo- mum, from which the true officinal or Malabar cardamom is derived. The Malabar cardamom plant has flag-like leaves, springing from an erect perennial stem, and rising lo a height of from 6 to 1 2 feet. The fruit is an ovate- triangular three-celled three-valved capsule of a dirty yellow colour, enclosing numerous angular seeds, which form the valuable part of the plant. It is a native of the moun tainous parts of the Malabar coast of India, and the fruits are procured either from wild plants or by cultivation throughout Travancore, Western Mysore, and along the Western Ghauts. A cardamom of much larger size found growing in Ceylon was formerly regarded as belonging to a distinct species, and described as under the name of Elettaria major; but it is now known to be only a variety of the Malabar cardamom. In commerce, several varieties are distinguished according to their size and flavour. The most esteemed are known as &quot;shorts,&quot; a name given to such capsules as are from a quarter to half an inch long and about a quarter broad. Following these come &quot; short- longs&quot; and &quot;long-longs,&quot; also distinguished by their size, the largest reaching to about an inch in length. The Ceylon cardamom attains a length of an inch and a half and is about a third of an inch broad, with a brownish pericarp and a distinct aromatic odour. Among the other plants, the fruits of which pass in commerce as cardamoms, are the round or cluster cardamom, Amomum Cardamomum, a native of Siam and Java ; the bastard cardamom of Siam, A. xanthioides: the Bengal cardamom, which is the fruit of A. aromaticum; the Java cardamom, produced by A. maximum ; the Nepal cardamom, and the Korarima cardamom of East Africa, the last two not being yet botanically described. Cardamoms generally are possessed of pleasant aromatic odour, and an agreeable spicy taste. On account of their flavour and stimulant properties they are much used with other medicines, and they form a prin cipal ingredient in curries and compounded spices. In the North of Europe they are much used as a spice and flavour ing material for cakes and liqueurs ; and they are very extensively employed in the East for chewing with betel, &c.  CARDAN (or, in the Italian form of the name, ), (1501-1576), famous as a mathematician, a physician, and an astrologer, born at Pa via, September 24, 1501, was the illegitimate son of Fazio Cardano, a learned jurist of Milan, himself distinguished by a taste for mathe matics. After a sickly childhood and a stormy boyhood, during which he received a very irregular education, he was sent to the university of Pavia, and subsequently to that of Padua, where he graduated in medicine. He was, however, excluded from the College of Physicians at Milan on account of his illegitimate birth, and his first endeavours to establish himself in practice had so little success that he and his young wife were at one time compelled to take refuge in the workhouse. It is not surprising that his first book should have been an exposure of the fallacies of the faculty. A fortunate cure of the child of the Milanese senator Sfon- drato now brought him into notice, and the interest of his patron procured him admission into the medical body. About this time (1539) he obtained additional celebrity by the publication of his Practice of Arithmetic, a work of great merit for the time, which indirectly led to his renown as a mathematician by engaging him in a correspondence with Nicolo Tartaglia, an ingenious calculator who had discovered an important improvement in the method of cubic equations. This discovery Tartaglia had kept to himself, but he was ultimately induced to communicate it to Cardan under a solemn promise that it should never be divulged. Cardan observed this promise in publishing his arithmetic, but when, several years afterwards, the isolated rule of Tartaglia had developed itself in his mind into a principle capable of transforming algebraical science, he thought himself justified in disclosing it as the ground work of his own comprehensive treatise on algebra, which appeared at Nuremberg in 1545. This memorable volume marks an era in the history of mathematics, being the first in which the principle of cubic equations was fully ex plained, and the first example of the application of alge braical reasoning to geometrical problems. Its publication naturally involved Cardan in a violent controversy with Tartaglia, and it must be admitted that his conduct cannot be strictly justified, notwithstanding his ample acknow ledgment of his obligations to his original instructor. Two years previously he had published a work even more highly regarded by his contemporaries, his celebrated treatise on astrology. This will hardly be enumerated in our day among his titles to fame, but it would be exceedingly unjust to regard it as a proof of superstition or weakness of mind. As a believer in astrology Cardan was on a level with the best minds of his age ; the distinc tion consisted in the comparatively cautious spirit of his inquiries and his disposition to confirm his assertions by an appeal to facts, or what he believed to be such. A very considerable part of his treatise is based upon observations carefully collected by himself, and, it must in candour be owned, seemingly well calculated to support his theory so far as they extend. If the testimony is nevertheless quite inadequate to its purpose, it must in fairness be considered that the proposition of the influence of the heavenly bodies on human affairs appeared to Cardan s contemporaries almost a truism. From this point of view it may be understood that the book should have been intended by 