Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/745

Rh tive explanation of the course of human love. The great beauty of Psyche, a king s daughter, excites the jealousy of Venus, who sends Cupid to her to inspire her with love for some ordinary person. But he is caught by her charms and lives with her happily in a fairy palace, she being under a vow not to look on him with her mortal eyes. Taunted for this by her sisters she breaks the vow and Cupid vanishes. Venus now imposes on her many sore troubles. At last she must fetch a box for her from Hades, which curiosity makes her open on the way, and the scent escaping from it overpowers her. Cupid comes to her aid, implores Jupiter in her behalf, and with his con sent she is removed to Olympus, where she lives for ever with Cupid.  CUPPING. The operation of cupping is one of the methods adopted by surgeons to draw blood from an inflamed part in order to relieve the inflammation. The apparatus required is a spirit lamp and a glass cup with a rounded edge. The skin is washed and dried ; the air is rarefied in the cup by the flame of the lamp ; the cup, is then firmly applied to the skin. A partial vacuum forms within the cup as the air cools, and the blood rushes from the neighbouring parts to the skin under the cup. Either the blood is drawn from the patient s body through a number of small wounds which are made in the skin, with a special instrument, before the cup is applied ; or the cup is simply applied to the unbroken skin and the blood drawn into the subcutaneous tissue within the circumference of the cup. The result of both methods is the same, namely, a withdrawal of blood locally from the inflamed part. The former is called moist cupping, the latter dry cupping. Moist cupping is inapplicable on exposed surface, as the mark of the small skin wounds is indelible.  CURAÇOA, or, an island in the Caribbean Sea, lying off the north coast of Venezuela, in 12&quot; N. lat., 69 W. long. It is 40 miles in length from N.W. to S.E., and 10 in average breadth; the area is 212 square miles. The island is hilly and deficient in water, being wholly dependent upon the rains ; yet, owing to the industry of the Dutch planters, considerable quantities of sugar, cotton, indigo, tobacco, and maize are raised. A peculiar variety of orange, the Citrus Aurantium curassuviensis, grows abundantly, and furnishes the distinguishing ingredient in the liqueur which takes its name from the island. The principal export is salt. The shores, which are bold, are in some places deeply indented, and present several har bours, the chief of which is Santa Anna, on the south-west side of the island. The entrance to this, which is narrow, is protected by Fort Amsterdam and other batteries ; but the harbour itself is large and secure, and is the port of the chief town Curagoa, or Willemstad. The population in 1875 amounted to 23,972, about one-third being eman cipated negroes. All belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, except about 2000 Protestants and 1000 Jews. The island was settled by the Spaniards about 1527, and was captured by the Dutch in 1634. It was taken by the English in 1798 and again in 1806, but was restored in 1814 to the Dutch, in whose possession it has since remained.  CURASSOW (Cracin(e), a group of gallinaceous birds forming one of the sub-families of Craddce, the species of which are among the largest and most splendid of the game birds of South America, where they may be said to repre sent the pheasants and grouse of the Old World. They are large, heavy birds, many of them rivalling the turkey in size, with short wings, long and broad tail, and strong bill. In common with the family to which they belong, they have the hind toe of the foot placed on a level with the others, thus resembling the pigeons, and unlike the majority of gallinaceous birds. With the exception of a single species found north of Panama, the curassows are confined to the tropical forests of South America, east of the Andes, and not extending south of Paraguay. They live in small flocks, and are arboreal in their habits, only occasionally descending to the ground, while always roosting and build ing their nests on the branches of trees. Their nests are neat structures, made of slender branches interlaced with stems of grass, and lined internally with leaves. They feed on fruits, seeds, and insects. They are said to be domesticated in several parts of South America, and Bates states that when journeying up the Amazon he was amused &quot;at the excessive and almost absurd tameness of a fine curassow turkey (Mitua tuberosa),&quot; which ran about one of the planter s houses in which he happened to stay. Large numbers of these birds were, according to Temminck, brought to Holland from Dutch Guiana towards the end of last century, and got so completely acclimatized arid domesticated as to breed in confinement like ordinary poultry ; but the establishments in which these were kept were broken up during the troubles that followed on the French Revolution. Their flesh is said to be exceedingly white and delicate, and this, together with their size and the beauty of their plumage, would make the curassows an important gain to the poultry yards of Europe, should they yet be successfully reared. The sub-family of curassows contains four genera and twelve species, all confined to South America, with the exception of Crax globicera a Central American species, which extends northward into Mexico. This bird is about 3 feet in length, of a glossy black colour, with green and purple reflections over the whole body, excepting the abdomen and tail coverts, which are white. In common with the other species of this genus its head bears a crest of feathers curled forward at the tips, which can be raised or depressed at will. The female is of a reddish colour, although varying greatly in this respect, and was until lately described as a separate species the Red Curassow. In another species, Crax incommoda, the greater part of the black plumage is beauti fully varied with narrow transverse bars of white. The Galeated Curassow (Paiixi galeata] is peculiar in having a large blue tubercle, hard and stony externally, but cellular within, and resembling a hen s egg in size and shape, situated at the base of the bill. It only appears after the first moulting, and is much larger in the male than in the female.  CURATE (from the Latin curare, to take care of), properly a presbyter who has the cure of souls within a parish, being the Latin equivalent of the Greek parocJivs. The term curate is tfsed in this general sense in certain rubrics of the Anglican Prayer Book, in which it is applied equally to rectors and vicars .o-s to perpetual curates. In a more limited sense it is applied in the Church of England to the incumbent of a parish who has no endowment of tithes, as distinguished from a perpetual vicar, who has an endowment of small tithes, which are for that reason sometimes styled vicarial tithes. The origin of such un endowed curacies is traceable to the fact that benefices were sometimes granted to religious houses plena jure, and with liberty for them to provide for the cure ; and when such appropriations were transferred to lay persons, being unable to serve themselves, the appropriators were required to nominate a clerk in full orders to the ordinary for his licence to serve the cure. Such curates, being not remov able at the pleasure of the appropriators, but only on clue revocation of the licence of the ordinary, came to be entitled perpetual curates. The term &quot; curate &quot; in the present day is almost exclusively used to signify a clerk who is assistant to an incumbent ; and a clerk in deacon s orders is competent to be licensed by a bishop to the office of such assistant curate. The consequence of this misu?o 