Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/756

 726 THRALE whose death the Thracian kingdom was split up in parts. Philip of Macedon conquered the greater part of it, and after the death of Alex- ander it was ruled by Lysimachus. It was subsequently annexed to Macedonia, and final- ly, with the latter, to the Roman dominions, though it long continued to be governed by native chiefs. After the division of the Roman empire it shared the fate of the eastern part. Its main parts now form the vilayet of Edirneli (Adrianople). (See ROUMELIA.) THRALE. See PIOZZI. THRASHER. See THRUSH. THRASYBULUS, an Athenian general, attached to the democratic party, died about the close of 390 B. 0. In 411 he was in command of nn Athenian galley in the fleet at Samos, and joined the opponents of the oligarchical gov- ernment of the 400. He was soon after made a general by an assembly in the camp, and procured the pardon and recall of Alcibiades. At the battle of Cynossema he commanded the right wing, and secured the victory by a sud- den attack upon the Peloponnesians. In 407, with a fleet of 30 ships, he reduced most of the revolted cities on the coast of Thrace to submission, and about the same time was with Alcibiades elected one of the new generals. Banished on the establishment of the thirty tyrants, he seized with the aid of some The- bans the fortress of, Phyle, and with 1,000 men occupied Pir^us. From this place he carried on a brisk warfare against the thirty, and the ten who succeeded them, and finally delivered Athens and restored the democratic government (403). In 395 he led an army to the assistance of the Thebans, then menaced by Sparta, and in 390 was sent with 40 ships to aid the Rhodians against Teleutias, restored the Athenian interest in Byzantium, secured several new alliances, and reduced Methymna and other towns in Lesbos. Afterward sail- ing south, he anchored in the Eurymedon, near Aspendus in Cilicia, when the inhabi- tants, exasperated by some act of his soldiers, killed him in the night. THRASYMENUS, or Trasimenus, Lake. See PE- RUGIA, and HANNIBAL. THREAD WORM. See ENTOZOA, vol. vi., p. 670. THREATENING LETTERS, sent to persons for the purpose of extorting money, have been said to constitute a misdemeanor or criminal offence at common law. Blackstone says that threatening by letter (even without demand) to kill any of the king's subjects or to fire their houses, &c., was made high treason by a statute of Henry VIII. ; and though this is no longer the law, the offence is punishable severely un- der existing statutes. In many of the United States there are statutory provisions, punishing with great severity an attempt to extort money by means of a threatening letter. It may be said generally that a threat, to be indictable, must be such as might naturally overcome a man of ordinary firmness and sagacity; and THRESHING MACHINE the money demanded under the threat must be money to which the sender of the letter has no right. In England, it would seem to be an offence at law to post up, on a placard or oth- erwise, a threatening notice. THREE RIVERS (Fr. Trois Rivieres), a city and port of entry of the province of Quebec, Canada, on the N. bank of the river St. Law- rence, at the mouth of the St. Maurice, 62 m. S. W. of the city of Quebec and 80 m. N. E. of Montreal; pop. in 1861, 6,058; in 1871, 7,570. It is connected by ferry with a branch of the Grand Trunk railway on the opposite bank of the St. Lawrence. The chief trade is in lumber, which is shipped in large quantities to South America, the West Indies, England, and the United States. The value of imports for the year ending June 30, 1874, was $82,- 097; of exports, $159,451. An additional ele- ment of prosperity is the manufacture of iron wares, for which the St. Maurice forges, 3 m. distant, are noted. The city contains two branch banks, a college, an English academy, an Ursuline convent and school, several other schools, a tri- weekly and a semi-weekly news- paper (both French), a Roman Catholic cathe- dral and parish church, and Episcopal, Presby- terian, and Wesleyan Methodist churches. The streets are lighted with gas. Three Rivers was founded in 1618. "With the parish of the same name it forms an electoral district for parliamentary purposes, having an area of 17$ sq. m. and 8,414 inhabitants in 1871. THRESHER. See SHARK, vol. xiv., p. 829. THRESHING MACHINE, a machine for thresh- ing and separating grain from the straw. The threshing floor of the ancients was a flat sur- face of ground covered with clay rolled smooth and hard. Sheaves of grain were spread evenly on this floor, and cattle driven over it until the grain was beaten out by the constant tramp- ing upon it. The Egyptians usually muzzled the ox while threshing, and the Greeks are said by ^Elian to have had the filthy practice of besmearing the mouths of animals with dung to prevent their eating the grain. The flail, which is yet in common use by small farmers, is a very ancient invention. Planks or timbers stuck over with pieces of flint or. hard wooden pegs were used to some ex- tent, but answered no good purpose. Michael Menzies of Scotland is supposed to have been the first inventor of a machine for threshing, which was merely an adaptation of suitable mechanism to drive a large number of flails by water power. Though unsuccessful in prac- tice, this machine attracted considerable atten- tion. In 1758 a Stirlingshire farmer named Leckie invented a rotary machine which con- sisted of a set of cross arms attached to a hori- zontal shaft, and the whole enclosed in a cylin- drical case. It proved tolerably efficient in threshing oats, but was not adapted to wheat, as it knocked off the entire head from the straw without separating the kernels. Mr. Leckie having demonstrated the superiority of