Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/403

* CATORCE. 343 CATSKILL GROUP. CATORCE, ka-tOr'sa; Sp. proii. ki'itoi'tha, or Alamos ue l'atorce. A city of Mexico, situ- ated in a barren district of the State of San Luis PotosI, 8700 feet al)ove sea-level, 120 miles north of San Luis Potost by rail (Jlap: Mexico, H (J). The towTi lies at the foot of a mountain 10,000 feet high, and is famous for its silver- mines, discovered in 1773. Population, 18,000. CA'TO STREET CONSPIRACY. See This- TLEWoon C'oxsi'ir.Acv. CAT OWL (from the resemblance of the face to that of a cat). A name applied rather indis- criminately to several large <uvls, suggested by their cat-like eyes and feline habits. In the United States, probably the barred owl {Syrnium iicbuloxiim) is the one most often so referred to. See Owl. CATS, kits, Jakob (1577-1660). The best of the southern Dutch poets in the Golden Age of that literature, while it was being illustrated in the north by the varied genius of Vondel. Hooft, and ^'ischcr. His poetry is characteristically Dutch in being extremely prosaic, commonplace in its metres, jejeune in language, monotonous in rhythms, and platitudinous in morals. A Dutch critic. Huet. has called him bitterly, "a personi- fied mediocrity, a vulgar and vulgarizing spirit," somewhat suggestive of the English Tupper. Cats was the youngest of four children, and his mother died in his infancy. He was adopted bj' an uncle, studied law in Leyden, Orleans, and Paris, and began to practice it at The Hague, where he won reputation, but lost his health. He went to England, where he found no relief, and was at last cured in Holland by an alchemist. In 160.J he moved to Middelburg. and presently mar- ried Elizabeth van Valkenburg, whom he calls "a foundation for a home." Cats became active in civic life, and wrote his Emblems of Fanci/ and Love: Maiden Duty (1618); Iimard Strife (1620); Manly Respectability; and Marriage. Tn 1021 he entered public life as pensionary of Midddburg, became pensionary of Dort in 1623, and curator of the University of Leyden in 1625. In this year appeared Fidelity, and in 1632 Mir- ror of the Old and yew Time. In 1627 Cats went on an embassy to England, became Grand Pensionary of Holland in 1G38, and Keeper of tlie (JreatSeal in 1645. These offices he resigned in 1651. and after a second embassy to England rctui-ned to literary work, in which for thirty years he had done little save the Betrothal Hing "(1637). He now wrote Age and Country Life; Court Thoughts; and .1 Life of Eighty-tuo, growing old gracefully and keeping a joy in life to the last. His Collected TTorA-s were published in Am'^terdam (19 vols., 1790-1800) and Zwolle (1856-62). CAT'S-EYE. A semi-transparent mineral which, when cut with a convex face (en cd- bochon), shows a chatoyant efi'ect. The name has been given to a greenish variety of chryso- beryl from Ceylon, where the Singhalese often carve it to resemble a monkey's face, taking advantage of the varving lights and colors of the stone to secure a grotesque likeness to that animal. Among the Hindus the cat's-eye was credited with the power of preserving and in- creasing its owner's wealth. The name cat's- eye was suggested by the peciiliar play of light called chatoyanry, which is due to the internal Btriations of the composite crv'stals of which the mineral consists. The name is also given to an opalescent variety of quartz, especially vvlieu similarly cut, the efTect in which is said to be due to the fibres of asl)estos or actinolite. A tiger-eye variety from the Orange River of South Africa is an altered erocidolite in which the fibrous iron silicate has been replaced by a de- position of chalcedonic quartz on the fibres. CATS'KILL. A village and county-seat of Greene County, N. Y., 34 miles south of Albany, on the Hudson Kiver, at the mouth of C'atskill Creek, and on the West Shore Railroad (Map: Xew York, G 3 ) . It has communication by ferrj' with the opposite bank of the river, is connected by steamboat lines with Xew York and Albany, and is the starting-jjoint of the Catskill Mountain Railroad. The village, fre- quented as a summer resort, though important rather as the point of departure for the more popular mountain resorts, has a court-house, opera-house, free academy, and public library. It manufactures woolens, hosiery, paper, bricks, etc. Catskill was settled about 1680 by Derrick Ten- nis Van Vechten. Population, in 1890, 4920; in 1900, 5484. CATSKILL GROUP. A series of sandstones and shales of Upper Devonian age exposed along the western slopes of the northern Appalachian Mountains and named from the Catskill iloun- tains of Xew York, where they were first studied. The series was formerly supposed to constitute a distinct geological group overlying the Chemung group, but careful investigation has sho«Ti that the rocks of the Catskill formation are shallow- water deposits formed along the shore-lines of the northeast bay of the interior Devonian sea during periods while the normal marine sedi- ments of the Hamilton, Portage, and Chemung groups were being laid Howa in the open and deeper waters that filled the western parts of the .same bay. The name 'Catskill formation,' then, signifies a local littoral development or facies of the normal L'pper Devonian formations, and as such it has no place in the geological time-scale. These Catskill conditions and sediments began in the Devonian of the eastern border of the basin at an earlier period than they did in the central and western portions, for the shoaling of the Devonian sea progressed from east to west. Be- cause of this the Lower Catskill deposits of the Catskill ilountain region are of Hamilton age, the middle Catskill of the eastern border and the Catskill of the east-central part of Xew York State are of Portage age and known as the Oneonta formation, while the Upper Catskill of the eastern border and the Cat-skill rocks of the central part of the State are of Chemung age. The rocks of the Catskill formation consist of shale and sandstone, with the latter often grad- ing into coarse conglomerates, and their pre- dominant colors are red, brown, greenish, and steel-gray. The sandstone, especially that of steel-gray color, often splits readily into thin horizontal layers and is then quarried for flag- stone. The entire output of flagstone known as- 'Hudson River bluestone' is obtained from the Catskill formation of Ulster, Delaware, and Greene counties, X. Y. As a rule the Cats- kill rocks are poor in fossil remains. Those most commonly found are the remains of land plants such as ferns, lepidodendrons, and trunks of coniferous trees. The most noteworthy foasil