Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/172

 1,'4 SOXNEBERG lands of the Central Provinces, in lat. 22 41' N., Ion. 82 7' E., near the source of the Ner- budda, and falls into the Ganges 28 m. above Patna, after a course of upward of 450 m. The general direction of its flow is northeast- erly, through Jubbulpore, Rewah, and Behar. All its important tributaries come from the south. In the highlands it flows through nar- row valleys, but lower down they widen into alluvial plains, which are well cultivated, and yield cotton, indigo, and sugar cane. It is about 3 m. wide at its junction with the Ganges, but the navigation is of little importance above Daudnugur, about 60 m. from that point, where the river is 10 or 12 ft. deep in the rainy sea- son, but at other times nearly dry. Coal is found upon the banks of its upper course, and agates and carnelians occur. Work is now (1876) in progress on the Sone irrigation pro- ject for supplying water to about 2,000,000 acres in the Patna division of Bengal, by a darn across the river, and other works. SONNEBERG, a town of Germany, in Sax- Meiningen, 35 m. S. E. of Meiningen ; pop. in 1871, 6,764. It is the centre of an important manufacturing district, and has a fine church, a new town hall, and a new government build- ing. Dolls and toys of wood and papier mache china goods, cotton hose, and kid gloves are made here in great perfection. The shipments to the United States amounted in 1873-'4 to $938,332 in gold. In the vicinity are marble and other quarries, and there are many brew- eries. An American consul is stationed here. SONNET (It. sonetto), a poem consisting of 14 iambic decasyllabic or endecasyllabic lines, rhyming in a peculiar manner. The first 8 lines make two quatrains, and the remaining 6 two tercets. There are two rhymes in the quatrains, the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 8th lines rhy- ming together, and also the 2d, 3d, 6th, and 7th. This is the best arrangement, as the Italians hold, but others occur, and sometimes, even in Petrarch, the rhymes are alternate. In the tercets great liberty is allowed ; the rhymes may be either two or three, and they may be arranged at the will of the poet, but never in couplets. There are but few Italian prece- dlnts for the form which the English poets prior to Milton gave to the sonnet. From the difficulty of continuing the same rhyme, they made it consist of three quatrains and a final couplet, each quatrain usually having its own two alternate and independent rhymes. The Anacreontic sonnet is composed of octo-sylla- bio lines. It is doubtful whether the sonnet was the invention of the Italians, or was de- rived by them from earlier Provencal poets. The oldest extant specimens are in Italian, by Lodortao Vernaccia (about A. D. 1200), and ro delle Vigne, chancellor of the em- peror Frederick II., who flourished early in the 18th century; the first who gave to it the arrangement which was subsequently adopted as its legitimate form was Guittone d'Arezzo (died in 1294); and it was carried to its high- SONOMA est excellence by Petrarch. The Italian son- net was introduced into Spain by the marquis of Santillana in the 15th century, and during the two following centuries it was regarded there with extravagant favor. It never found much favor in France, and fell into ridicule in the 17th century through the louts rimes, or blank sonnets, in which the rhyming words were first chosen and arranged, while the sub- ject was to be selected and the body of the sonnet to be written afterward. In Germany the sonnet has been chiefly cultivated by the poets of the romantic school. The earlier English form of the sonnet was introduced by Surrey and Wyatt in the reign of Henry VIII. ; and there are numerous sonnets by Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Daniel, Drayton, Drum- mond, and others. Milton returned to the genuine Italian form, but did not always ad- here to it. From the time of Milton for near- ly a century few sonnets were written in Eng- land. It was revived in the Italian form by Edwards, Gray, and T. Wharton, while Bowles, Charlotte Smith, and Helen Maria Williams reverted to the easier form of the old English sonnets. See "The Sonnet: its Origin, Struc^ ture, and Place in Poetry, with original Trans- lations from the Sonnets of Dante and Pe- trarch," by Charles Tomlinson (London, 1874). SOXXm DE MANONCOURT, Charles Nicolas Si- gisbert, a French naturalist, born in Luneville, Feb. 1, 1751, died In Paris, May 29, 1812. Being commissioned as a marine engineer, he spent several years in Cayenne and on the W. coast of Africa, afterward passed some time with Buffon, and in 1777 joined the African expedition under Baron de Tott. After visit- ing Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor, he returned to France in 1780. He contributed to Buf- fon's Histoire naturelle 13 volumes of fishes, 1 of cetacea, and with Latreille 4 of reptiles. He lost his fortune by the revolution, and afterward edited a Bibliotheque pfiysico-eco- nomique (1801-'12), and Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle (24 vols. 8vo, 1803 et seq. and published accounts of his travels. SONOMA, a N. W. county of California, bound- ed S. E. by San Pablo bay and W. by the Pa- cific ocean, and watered by Russian, Santa Rosa, Petaluma, and Sonoma rivers; area, 1,400 sq. m.; pop. in 1870, 19,819, of whom 473 were Chinese. The N. part is mountainous, being traversed by spurs of the Coast range, which are generally well timbered. The valleys are very fertile, and Sonoma valley is celebrated for its vineyards. In the N. E. part of the county are the geysers, a collection of hot springs. Gold, silver, copper, quicksilver, and coal occur, but not generally in paying quan- tities. The county is traversed by the San Francisco and North Pacific railroad. The chief productions in 1870 were 618,425 bush- els of wheat, 145,792 of Indian corn, 323,961 of oats, 195,456 of barley, 369,154 of potatoes, 808,496 gallons of wine, 230,394 Ibs. of wool, 1,060,266 of butter, 246,900 of cheese, and