Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/638

626 , the Fitzroya patagonica, which is ed in small planks. The next article in importance is the, which is indigenous, and which is produced in increasing quantities as  is cleared of. Signs of -beds of considerable size and value have been discovered in the. See.  CHILON, one of the seven sages of, was a n by birth His father's name was Damagetos, and he appears to have flourished about the beginning of the In he acted as, but little more is known of his life. He is said to have died of joy on hearing that his son had gained a prize at the. tells us that he composed, but none of these are extant. Many of his s have been handed down. They show much of the weight and brevity that might be expected in a n, but are not so pointed and severe as those of. According to Chilon the great of  was prudence, or well grounded judgment as to future events. (Diog. Laer., i. §§ 68–73; Mullach, Frag. Phil. Græc., i.).  CHILTERN HILLS, a range of s in, extending through part of, , and , and attaining their highest elevation of 904 in the neighbourhood of. At one time the Chilterns were thickly covered with a of, and the western district of  was only cleared by  The depredations of the , who found shelter within their recesses, became at an early period so alarming that a special , known as the  of the Chiltern , was appointed for the protection of the inhabitants of the neighbouring districts. The necessity for such an appointment has disappeared long ago, but the three of, , and  in  are still distinguished by the old name, and a  is still nominated by the  of the , with a  of 20 and the s of the. The sole importance of the sinecure consists in the fact that its acceptance enables a member of the to resign his seat, on the plea that he holds a place of  and  under the. This appropriation of the post only dates from the, and its intrinsic has been called in question; but the  is now completely legitimated by a long line of precedents. An application for the ship of the Chiltern Hundreds was once refused, in.  CHIMÆRA, in, a resembling a  in the fore part, a  in the middle, and a  behind, and having three s corresponding to the three parts of her body. Each  forth, and she committed great ravages throughout  and , till she was overthrown by , mounted on the ed. Some have supposed that the owed its origin to the  Chimæra, in, where works have been found containing representations of the. In modern, the Chimæra is usually represented as a , out of the back of which grow the and  of a. As a general term chimæra signifies any fiction of the made up of incongruous elements, or, generally, any fantastic idea or impracticable scheme of action.  CHIMAY, a of, in the of, on the , or White Water, about 28 s south of. It contains 3000 inhabitants, and has, , , and. In it was raised to the rank of a ship by, and in  was erected into a  in favour of  of. Since it has passed in  to the s of, and in  to the  family of. In   married the daughter of the  , a woman of great wit and beauty, who had been previously the wife of  and of , and had taken an active part in the overthrow of. Their son Joseph, born in, is the present possessor of the title, and has held the of  plenipotentiary.  CHIMPANZEE. See, ..    

<section end="TCHINA" /> <section begin="NONESUCH" /> <section end="NONESUCH" /> <section begin="CHINA" />HE account of this great of  may fitly commence with a brief notice, 1st, of China as known to the ancients (the land of Sinæ or Seres), and, 2d, of China as known to mediæval Europe (Cathay).

China as known to the Ancients.

The spacious seat of ancient which we call China has loomed always so large to Western eyes, and has, in spite of the distance, subtended so large an angle of vision, that, at eras far apart, we find it to have been distinguished by different appellations, according as it was reached by the southern -route, or by the northern -route traversing the of. In the former aspect the name has nearly always been some form of the name Sin, Chin, Sinæ, China. In the latter point of view the region in question was known to the ancients as the land of the Seres, to the as the of Cathay.

The name of ' has been supposed (doubtfully) to be derived from the of ', which enjoyed a brief but very vigorous existence, uniting all the  under its authority, and extending its conquests far beyond those limits to the south and the west. The mention of the Chinas in ancient, both in the laws of Manu and in the Mahâbhârat, has often been supposed to prove the application of the name long before the predominance of the. But the coupling of that name with the Daradas, still surviving as the people of, on the , suggests it as more probable that those Chinas were a kindred of mountaineers, whose name as Shinas in fact likewise remains applied to a branch of the  s. Whether the Sinim of the   should be interpreted of the Chinese is probably not at present susceptible of any decision; by the context it appears certainly to indicate a people of the extreme east or south.

The name probably came to through the, who made the China of the further east into Sîn, and perhaps sometimes into Thîn. Hence the Thin of the author of the Periplus, who appears to be the first extant writer to employ the name in this form (i.e., assuming 's view that he belongs to the ); hence also the Sinæ and Thinæ of Claudius Ptolemy. It has often indeed been denied that the Sinæ of Ptolemy really represented the. But if we compare the statement of Marcianus of (a mere condenser of ), when he tells us that the “nations of the Sinæ lie at the extremity of the habitable world, and adjoin the eastern ,” with that of Cosmas, who says, in speaking of Tzinista, a name of which no one can question the application to China, that “beyond this there is neither habitation nor ,&rdquo;—we cannot doubt the same region to be meant by both. The <section end="CHINA" />