Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/396

384 of undisputed and enduring value. He often deals with gloomy and sometimes with ghastly and repulsive subjects ; and even in his lighter and gayer productions there is too frequently an undertone of sadness or of satire. In the lyrical expression of the domestic emotions he displays a fine felicity, and he knows how to pour true pathos into a tale of love or vengeance. The &quot; Lion s Bride&quot; Die Lmvenbraut may be taken as a sample of his weird and powerful simplicity; and &quot; Retribution,&quot; Vergeltung is remarkable for a pitiless precision of treatment. The &quot; Song of Women s Devotion &quot; Em Lied von dcr Weibertreue might find a place in the Ingoldsby Legends; and &quot;Cousin Anselmo&quot; Vetter A nselmo is worthy to rank with the ballads of Southey. Of more celebrity perhaps than any of his poems is the little prose narrative of Pater Schlemihl, the man who lost his shadow, which first appeared in 1814, and was soon afterwards translated into several European languages. It was written partly to divert his own attention from gloomier thoughts, and partly to afford amusement to the children of his friend Hitzig ; and the plot was suggested by a casual question of Fouque s. First and prominently a genuine story such as children love, with full allowance of incident and fun, it is also to the older and sympathetic reader an allegory only too accurate of the poet s own life. For full details see the Leben und Briefe, by Hitzig, in the fifth and sixth volumes of Chamisso s Werke.

1em  {{ti|1em|{{larger|CHAMOIS}} (Rupicapra tray its}, the Gemse of the Germans, is the only Antelope found in Western Europe, and forms the type of the Ilupicaprine or goat-like group of that family. It resembles the roebuck in size, being about 3 feet long and 2 feet high at the shoulders, and is specially characterized by the form of its horns. These are from 6 to 8 inches long, of a black colour, slender, round, and slightly striated, rising perpendicularly from the forehead, and suddenly hooked backwards at their extremities. They are common to both sexes, although in the female they are less uncinated. The body is covered with long hair of a chestnut brown colour in winter, when it is also longest, that of the head being paler, with a dark brown Btreak on each side. At other seasons the colour is some what lighter, in spring approaching to grey. Underneath the external covering the body is further protected from the cold by a coat of short thick wool of a greyish colour. The tail is short and black, the ears pointed and erect ; the hoofs are solid, with the outer edges higher than the soles, and are thus admirably adapted for laying hold of the slightest projection or roughness on the face of the rocky precipices it frequents. The chamois is gregarious, living in herds of 15 or 20, and feeding generally in the morning or evening. The old males, however, live alone except in the rutting season, which occurs in October, when they join the herds, driving off the young males, and engaging in fierce contests with each other, that often end fatally for one at least of the combatants. The period of gestation is twenty weeks, when the female, beneath the shelter generally of a projecting rock, produces one and sometimes two young. They are said to attain the age of thirty years. The chamois inhabits the Alpine regions of Central Europe from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus, and extends eastwards as far as Persia, frequenting the wildest and most inaccessible peaks and ravines of these mountain ranges. Tn summer it ascends to the limits of perpetual snow, being only outstripped in the loftiness of its haunts by the ibex ; and during that season it shows its intolerance of heat by choos ing such browsing grounds as have a northern exposure. In winter it descends to the wooded districts that immediately succeed the region of glaciers, and it is there only that it can be successfully hunted. Chamois are exceedingly shy ; and their senses, especially those of sight and smell, are exceedingly acute. The herd never feeds without having a sentinel posted on some suitable prominence to give timely notice of the approach of danger ; this is done by stamping on the ground with the fore feet, and uttering a shrill whistling note, which puts the entire herd on the alert. No sooner is the object of alarm scented or seen than each one seeks safety in the most inaccessible situa tions, which are often reached by a series of astounding leaps over crevasses, up the faces of seemingly perpendicular rocks, or down the sides of equally precipitous chasms. The chamois will not hesitate, it is said, thus to leap down 20 or even 30 feet, and this it effects with apparent ease by throwing itself forward diagonally and striking its feet several times in its descent against the face of the rock. Chamois-shooting is most successfully pursued when a number of hunters form a circle round a favourite feeding ground, which they gradually narrow ; the animals, scent ing the hunters to windward, fly in the opposite direction, only to encaunter those coming from leeward. Chamois- hunting, in spite of, or perhaps owing to, the great danger attending it, has always been a favourite pursuit among the hardy mountaineers of Switzerland and Tyrol, as well as of the amateur sportsmen of all countries, with the result that the animal is now much rarer than formerly. In certain parts of Switzerland it now enjoys a close season ; thus in the Canton of Orisons it can only be hunted during September, and there in 1874 no fewer than 918 were killed during that period, the largest number shot by one sportsman being 1G. The chamois feeds in summer on mountain herbs and flowers, and in winter chiefly on the young shoots and buds of the fir and pine trees. It is particularly fond of salt, and in the Alps sandstone rocks containing a saline impreg nation are often met with hollowed by the constant licking of these creatures. The skin of the chamois is very soft ; made into leather it was the original shammy, which is now made, however, from the skins of many other animals. The flesh is prized as venison. The chamois can be at least partially tamed, and in that state, according to Major Smith, it evinces all the mixture of impudence, timidity, and curiosity observed in goats.}}  CHAMOMILE or, the flores aiithemidis of the Pharmacopoeia, are the capitula or flower- heads of Anthemis nobilis (Nat. Ord. Composite), a plant indigenous to England and Southern Europe. It is ex tensively cultivated for medicinal purposes in Surrey, at several places in Saxony, and in France and Belgium, that grown in England being much more valuable than any of the foreign chamomiles brought into the market. In the wild plant the florets of the ray are ligulate and white, and contain pistils only, those of tbe disc being tubular and yellow ; but under cultivation the whole of the florets tend to become ligulate and white, in which state the flower- heads are said to be double. The flower-heads are desti tute of pappus ; they have a warm aromatic odour, which is characteristic of the entire plant, and a very bitter taste. In addition to a bitter extractive principle, they yield about 2 per cent, of a volatile liquid, which on its first extraction is of a pale blue colour, but becomes a yellowish brown on exposure to light. It has the charac teristic odour of the flowers, and consists of a mixture of butylic and amylic angelate and valerate. Angel ate of potassium has been obtained by treatment of the oil with caustic potash, and angelic acid may be isolated from this by treatment with dilute sulphuric acid. Chamomile is used in ir.odicine in the form of an infusion, made 