Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/389

 CHERRY LAUREL CIIERTSEY 381 ishraent to birds, which are said to be some- times affected by it with a sort of intoxication. The prunus avium (Linn.), or cerasus sylves- tris (Loud.), is the wild cherry tree of England and continental Europe, and in favorable sit- uations acquires a height of 60 or 70 ft. in about 50 years. Its fruit is known in England by the name of gean, and is highly prized in France for the food it supplies to the poor. It is also used to make jelly and cherry brandy. Its wood is manufactured into furniture and musical instruments. Wine casks made of it are said to improve the flavor of wine kept in them. CIIERRY LAUREL (prunus lauro - cerasus, Linn.), called in England the common or broad- leaved laurel, is a native of the Levant, and was brought from Constantinople to Holland in. 1576. It has racemose flowers, pale ever- green oblong-lanceolate leaves, and is so hardy that neither frost nor drought seems to affect Cherry Laurel (Prunus lauro-cerasus) it. It is now one of the most popular ever- greens in English pleasure grounds, and is al- most as common in shrubberies as the rose. Its leaves are poisonous from the abundant hydro- cyanic acid which they contain, and should be used with caution. By distillation the laurel water of commerce, the German Kirschwasser, and other poisonous cordials, are obtained from them. The fresh leaves are often employed to give a flavor to culinary preparations. (IIERSOV. See KHERSON. CHERSONESUS, or Chersonese (Gr. Xeptrdv^o?), the ancient designation for a peninsula. The word is not used generally of all peninsulas, and the ancients do not appear to have re- garded all such pieces of land partially sur- rounded by water as we should now desig- nate as peninsulas, in that light. Spain, for instance, and Italy, they never seem to have looked at in their general conformation. What they generally regarded as a chersonese ap- pears to have been a long narrow strip of land, with its projecting length far exceed- ing its breadth. Of the larger peninsulas of antiquity four were known as chersoneses, be- sides many smaller ones scarcely exceeding what we should now call promontories or head- lands, the latter word exactly corresponding with what the Greeks called anpa. Three of these four have an elongated shape, the other being nearly an irregular parallelogram, con- nected by a narrow neck with the mainland, and all have narrow straits connected with them, which in two instances are termed bos- pori. The first is the Thracian Chersonese, now the peninsula of Gallipoli, commonly known to the Greeks as the Chersonesus em- phatically; being the long, narrow strip of land running out southwesterly from the main- land of Thrace, between the Hellespont, now Dardanelles, and the gulf of Melas, now of Saros. Not many leagues distant, at the east- ern extremity, is the Thracian Bosporus, now the strait of Constantinople. The second is the Tauric Chersonese, the modern Crimea, which alone has not the elongated shape, but is some- what fashioned into the semblance of a trape- zium. It has, however, a narrow channel, the strait of Yenikale, which is also a bosporus, called the Cimmerian for distinction, across which, before the earliest historic ages, the Scythian Cimmerii are said to have been con- ducted by a heifer; as in later times the Huns are reported to have been introduced under the same guidance. The third is the Cimbric Chersonese, or Jutland with the main part of Schleswig, which has the above described shape and the narrow strait, probably called the Cim- bric Bosporus, between its right flank and the island of Funen, known as the Little Belt. The last is the Aurea Chersonesus, or Golden Chersonese, the modern peninsula of Malacca. CHERTSEY (Anglo-Saxon, Ceortes Eye, or isl- and), a town of England, in Surrey, situated on a slip of land between the right bank of the Thames and the brook from Virginia water, 22 m. S. W. of London; pop. in 1871, 9,305. A stone bridge with seven arches here con- nects the counties of Surrey and Middlesex. The town is irregularly laid out, but the streets are paved, and most of the houses are of brick T and it is surrounded by villas. The parish church of St. Anne, partly rebuilt in 1806, has a square embattled tower and a tablet in memo- ry of Charles James Fox, who resided in the neighborhood. The poet Cowley secluded himself in the latter part of his life in the so- called Porch house, Guildford street, where he died. There are a number of educational, char- itable, and other institutions, among which is one endowed in 1725 by Sir William Perkins, providing hundreds of children with education, and a number of them also with clothing. The principal trade of the town is in malt, flour, tiles, and bricks, of which latter articles great quantities are made. Vegetables are raised extensively for the London market, and there are annual cattle and sheep fairs, and weekly