Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/581

 CHURCH RATE CIIURUBUSCO 569 over which he presided till 1853. The ensuing year he established a young ladies' seminary at La Porte, Ind., which, after a little more than a year of successful progress, was broken up by the destruction of the buildings by fire. He received soon after the appointment of su- perintendent of the Wisconsin institute for the blind, at Janesville. CHURCH BATE, a tax imposed on the parish- ioners and occupiers of land in a parish of England for church repairs. The tax is pro- posed by the church wardens, and must be voted by a majority of the parishioners in ves- try assembled. It is distinct from tithes, from which in early times the repairs were made. Before the reformation the levy of church rates might be compelled by spiritual censures ahd punishments, but since then it has been generally understood to rest entirely in the discretion of the parishioners. Recently, how- ever, in the Braintree case, and the case of St. George's, Colgate, Norwich, efforts were made to compel the payment of a levy made by the wardens where the parish had refused to vote it, and to punish parishioners who had voted against the tax ; but in each instance without success. The decisions in these cases strength- ened the opposition of dissenters and others, which previously had been troublesome, and at length, by statutes 31 and 32 Victoria, c. 109, the payment of church rates was made no longer compulsory. The rate was abolished in Ireland in 1823. In Scotland the burden of church repairs is by .custom on the heri- tors or owners of land in the parish subject to ecclesiastical charges. CHURN, a vessel in which cream is agitated to separate the butter from the other portions. It has various forms, the simplest and most gen- erally preferred being the common dash churn, which is either a cylindrical or barrel-shaped vessel, standing upon one end and having a cover fitted to the other, with a hole in its centre for the passage of the handle of the dasher. This is the instrument for producing the agitation of the cream, and consists of a wooden rod a little more than an inch in diameter and from three to four feet long, having two boards at- tached crosswise at the lower end, of a length somewhat less than the diameter of the churn. The form and size of these cross pieces are im- portant, as upon them depends the proper agi- tation of the cream. The motion which has been found to give the best results in churning is that which produces a thud or shock, such as would be given if a keg or small slender barrel, partly filled with a liquid and suspend- ed in a horizontal position by both ends, were swung in one direction, endways, and then sud- denly stopped ; and, indeed, this form of churn has been used in Holland, England, and the United States, and for making small quantities of butter is probably the best. It is called a swing churn. An ingenious contrivance for imparting a similar motion to the contents of the churn has been invented in England. It consists in revolving a barrel-shaped vessel upon a diagonal axis, by means of which each end is alternately raised and lowered, thereby throwing the cream from one end to the other. Wheel churns of an almost endless variety have been invented, and some of the simpler forms answer the purpose intended very well ; but they are all interior to the dash and swing churns. Some combine aeration with agita- tion, by forcing streams of air through the cream; but such contrivances are now re- garded by all good butter makers as worse than useless, because, although they may quickly effect the rupture of the butter globules, they incorporate the sacs and other portions with the butter, rendering it liable, to become rancid by fermentation. The design in many of the inventions has been to hasten the operation of churning; but it has been found that when cream is in the best condition for making but- ter, the time occupied should be from 40 min- utes to one hour. (See BUTTEE.) CHURRUCA V ELORZA, Cosine Damian dc, a Spanish naval officer, born at Motrico, in the province of Guipuzcoa, Sept. 27, 1761, died at Trafalgar, Oct. 21, 1805. He distinguished himself at the siege of Gibraltar in rescuing some of the survivors from the floating bat- teries, after the latter had been destroyed by the English. Having received an appointment in a Spanish surveying expedition to the strait of Magellan, he wrote an admirable diary of his exploration of Tierra del Fuego, which was pub- lished at Madrid in 1793. In 1791, being then in command of a frigate, he was placed at the head of an expedition fitted out for the purpose of surveying the coasts of the gulf of Mexico. The war which soon after broke out between Spain and France interrupted this work, and compelled Churruca to leave his task unfinished ; but he had already completed 24 charts of the coasts of Cuba, Hayti, Porto Rico, &c., some of which have since been published. He was afterward sent as an envoy to Brest, and was received with distinction by Napoleon, then first consul. In October, 1805, he was in com- mand of a frigate at Cadiz, and shortly before the battle of Trafalgar wrote to a friend, " If you hear that my ship is taken, know for cer- tain that I am dead." In that battle, his leg having been shot away by a cannon ball, he died three hours afterward. CHURUBUSCO, a small village about 6 m. S. of the city of Mexico, on the Rio de Churu- busco, at which a battle between the Mexicans under Santa Anna, and the Americans under Scott, was fought Aug. 20, 1847. It contains the massive convent of San Pablo. The road to Mexico is an elevated and paved causeway crossing the river by a stone bridge. The banks of the stream have been raised and planted with trees. At this point Santa Anna took a determined stand after the battle of Contreras, to intercept Scott's advance toward the capital. The Americans carried the place after a sharp action. The engagements at