Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/210

 202 CENTAURUS CENTIPEDE in human shape named Centaurus, who was hated alike by gods and men. Wandering wild over Mount Pelion, he begot the centaurs out of the Magnesian mares. Another story is The Centaur Chiron and Cupid. that while Pirithous, one of the Lapithrp, was celebrating his nuptials with Hippodamia, one of the centaurs carried her off. This led to the great fight between the centaurs and the Lapithse, in which the centaurs were defeated. In early times the centaurs were represented in sculpture as men down to their legs and feet, but having a hind part consisting of the body, tail, and hind legs of a horse. But afterward they were represented as horses, perfect in all respects below and behind the withers and the chest. At the insertion of the neck a human body began, the hip joints articulating into the shoulders of the lower animal, and the abdo- men of the man uniting with the chest of the horse. Above this the human conformation was perfect, with the erect bearing, chest, shoulders, arms, neck, and head of a complete man. They were represented as endowed with extraordinary powers of body and mind. Palro- phatus, one of the later Greek wrjters, under- took, in his work Tlepl 'An-forwv, to explain the origin of the myth of the centaurs. Accord- ing to him, they were a body of young men of a town in Thessjly who first used horses for the purpose of riaing. Thus mounted, they pursued the wild bulls, and transfixed them with their spears, and hence were called KV- ropef, prickers, or nevrdvpoi, bull-prickers. The neighboring inhabitants, seeing men mounted on horses, imagined that the man and the ani- mal were one being, just as the Mexicans did in the case of the Spanish cavaliers ; and hence originated the fable of beings half man and half horse. CENTACRrS, or The (Yntanr, a southern con- stellation, only a small part of which rises in our latitude. Two stars of the first magnitude arc catalogued in the portion which does not appear above our horizon. This is one of the 48 ancient constellations formed by Ptolemy, who first discovered the likeness of a centaur in it. On the celestial maps of the Arabs it is represented by a bear mounted on horseback. < KM U K Y. a genus of plants of the family gentianacea, comprehending a large number of unimportant species, which are natives of Eu- rope, Asia, Africa, and a very few of America. One of the species is fabled to have cured the centaur Chiron of the wound in his foot made by the arrow of Hercules, and to have Inner derived its name. It was formerly supposed to have extraordinary medicinal powers, and said to cure not only fevers, but also the Ccntaury. plague, and the worst ulcers ; but its proper- ties are only those of a bitter tonic, like those of other members of the same family. CENTIGRADE SCALE, the 100 parts, named grades or degrees, adopted particularly by the French for the thermometer. It was devised in 1742 by Celsius, professor at Upsal, the lim- its of the division into 100 being the boiling and freezing points of water, though the scale is made to extend to convenient lengths below and above these points. In Fahrenheit's scale, the freezing point being 82 and the boiling point 212, 180 include the same range as 100 of the centigrade thermometer. The ratio of one degree of Fahrenheit to one of the centi- grade is therefore the same with that of 5 to 9. But as the zero point of the Fahrenheit ther- mometer is 32 below the freezing point, which is the zero point of the centigrade, this number must be added to the results obtained from the ratio above stated. Thus, if the degree on .the Fahrenheit scale which corresponds to 15 cen- tigrade is to be found, 15 must first be multi- plied by 9 and the product divided by 5 ; to 27, the quotient obtained, 82 must be added, and the sum, 59, will be the degree on the Fahren- heit scale required. CENTIPEDE, an articulated animal, formerly considered an insect, but since the time of Dr. Leach placed in the class myriapoda, and in the genus scolopendra. This class is distinguished