Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/481

 CRESSON CRETINS 477 belong to the natural order cruciferce. The water cresses (nasturtium and sisymbrium) are the most common varieties. They grow Water Cress (Nasturtium). abundantly on the banks of rivulets and small ponds, may be eaten as a salad, and are valued as antiscorbutic medicines. CRESSON, Elliott, an American philanthropist, born March 2, 1796, died Feb. 20, 1854. He was a merchant in Philadelphia, and a mem- ber of the society of Friends. His attention was especially turned toward the Indian and negro population of the United States. At one time he proposed to become a missionary among the Seminoles of Florida, and afterward engaged in establishing the first African colony of liberated slaves in the territory of Bassa Cove. In the winter of 1838-'9 he made the tour of the New England states as agent of the national colonization society, and he spent the next winter in a similar mission in the south- ern states. He visited England in 1840-'42, and again in 1850-'53, in order to further the project of colonization. By his will he left about $122,000 to be distributed among vari- ous benevolent institutions, besides a landed estate of more than $30,000 to establish a home for aged or infirm merchants, and gentlemen who had become impoverished. CRESSY. See CRECY. CRESWICK, Thomas, an English landscape painter, born in Sheffield in March, 1811, died at Bayswater, Dec. 28, 1869. He studied art in Birmingham, and afterward in London. His first pictures were exhibited at the royal academy in 1828. He became an associate of the academy in 1842, and a member in 1851. He is best known by his drawings of English scenery and the paintings "The Weald of Kent," "Home by the Sands," and "The London Road a Century ago." CRETACEOUS GROUP (Lat. creta, chalk), a series of stratified rocks forming the upper di- vision of the secondary formation, distinguished as containing the last strata of which the fossil animal remains are wholly of extinct species. The group is subdivided into upper and lower ; the former is often called from its principal member the chalk, and the latter for the same reason the greensand. The group under- lies the tertiary beds of the London and Paris basins, rising up toward the straits of Dover on each side, along the coast of which its white chalk clifis form prominent objects in the scenery. The formation is represented in New Jersey by beds of yellowish limestone and of greensand, which contain fossil shells, some of which belong to the same species, and most of them to the same genera, with those found in the cretaceous rocks of Europe. The same genera of fish also are common to the group of the two countries. The formation is traced through the eastern part of North Carolina and central part of Georgia, and after sweep- ing round the southern termination of the Alleghanies in Alabama passes through that state and Mississippi northward into Tennessee and Kentucky. It is recognized near Council Bluffs oh the Missouri, in Texas, in the Rocky mountains, upon the Andes near Bogota, and also in Hindostan. Thus at widely separated points in the ancient seas of four continents were similar deposits produced during the same geological period, characterized by the animal remains they include, of the same general type, and often of the same species. For the rela- tions of this group to those which precede and succeed it, see GEOLOGY ; and for further de- tails regarding its members, see CHALK, and GKEENSAND. CRETE. See CANDIA. CRETINS, persons in whom partial or com- plete idiocy is combined with great bodily deformity. The name cretin is of uncertain origin. Virey derives it from Chretien, Chris- tian, because the inhabitants of the countries where cretinism prevails were very generally disposed to regard the cretins as incapable of sinfulness (" souls without sin," they call them), and hence regarded them as favored of God, or " good Christians." Blackie derives it from the Romance or Grison cretina, a corruption of the Latin creatura, a creature ; corresponding to the term Qeschopf, by which they are designated in some parts of Germany. The characteristics of the cretin, as given by Berchtold Beaupie", in his Dissertation sur lea cretins, are: a large head, squat and bloated figure, bleared and hollow eyes, projecting eyelids, flat nose, and protruding tongue ; the chest is narrow, back curved, limbs short and misshapen, knees thick, feet flat ; the belly is loose, like a bag, the in- teguments being so relaxed that they cannot retain the intestines in its cavity. The cretin can scarcely walk, hear, or speak. He is greedy for food, and has the sexual instinct largely developed, in its most brutal form. This unfortunate class are far more widely distribu- ted than has been generally supposed. Through- out the whole sub- Alpine region in Europe, as