Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/489

* CENTAUKS. 419 CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION. types may be distinjiuislied. In one a human body from the waist ui)vanl is joineil to the body and four le<rs of a horse : in the earlier tvpe the fore h-jis are aUo human, and the liinder parts only are equine, tireek legend knows two pood centaurs, Chiron (q.v.) and Pholus; hut the others are ■epresented as sav- .ijie and lustful. They appear most often in battle with the l.apith;p (q.v.). or with Hercules. In later art they appear in the Di- ony s i a c circle, drawing the char- iot of the god, plagued by Cupids, or in company with satyrs and n_ uphs. The etymologj- and original meaning of the name are wholly uncertain. It is possible that they are a personi- fication of the winter torrents so conunon in Greece and often very destructive. CENTATJ'KTJS (Lat., from Gk. Kfivaiyjof, Kentuuros ) . Tlie Centaur, one of the constella- tions in the Southern Hemisphere, represented on the celestial globe by a form half man and half horse. The principal star in this constella- tion, a Centauri. has lieen found to have the largest parallax (q.v.) of any fixed star. In other words, a Centauri is nearer to us in space than any other star. The difficulty of measur- ing stellar distance is so great, on account of the extreme delicacy of the necessary observa- tions, that it was not until 18.38 that such meas- urements were rendered possible by Bessel (q.v.), who determined the parallax of 61 Cygni with great precision. In the very next year Hender- son, at the Cape of Good Hope Observatory, measured the parallax of a Centauri, but his results have since been replaced by the more ac- curate recent heliometric observations of Gill and Elkin, made at the same observatory. These astronomers make the distance 4.4 light-j-ears, a 'light-year' being the distance traversed by light in one year. When we remember that light moves with a velocity of 186..3.30 miles a second, we can form some idea of the immense distance separating us from our nearest neighbor among the fixed stars. CEN'TAtTRY (Lat. centauria, Gk. K£i>rai-- f)tiov,l,inliJtireio)i, from GVi. id^iTavpog, kenlauros, centaur: so called because it was supposed to liave healed the wounded foot of the centaur Chiron ), Krtithrccn. A genus of plants of the order Gcntianace.-e. having a funnel-shaped regu- lar five-partite corolla. The species are pretty little annuals, natives chiefly of the temperate j)arts of Europe and Asia, with pink or rose- ofilored flowers. They possess the tonic and other medicinal virtues of gentian, and although not frequently administered by physicians, are an important domestic medicine : and the tops are collected, when the plant is in flower, by the eountry people both in England and on the Con- tinent of Europe, to be emploj'ed in cases of dyspepsia, in intermittent fevers, and as a vermi- fuge. They contain a substance called cen- taurin, the hydrochlorate of which is said to be an excellent febrifuge. The conunon centaury {Eriithrwa ccntaurium) is the species most fre- quent in Great Britain, a plant of eight inches to a foot in height, with flowers collected in loose heads, growing in dry pastures. Two or three other species are found on sandy seashores. Nearly allied to these is the American centaury iSiihlxitia iiiifjuhiris), an annual plant with an erect, quadrangular stem, extensively distributed throughout the United States and Canada, and much used in the domestic practice of America as a prophylactic against autunmal fevers in strong infusions and large and repeated doses. There are more than a dozen species of Sabbatia in the United States, and the European species of centaury are introduced to some extent in waste grounds. CEN'TENARY (Lat. reiitenariux, consisting of a hundred, from centrni, munbered by hun- dreds, from cintum. liundred). . hundred of anything: ii period of a hundred years; liut usually employed to denote the conmiemoration of an important event. The centenary of Ameri- can independence was celebrated by a centennial exhibition in 1876; the bicentenary of Pope's birth in 1888: the rer-centenary of Shakespeare's birth in 1864; the or^o-centenary of the Bologna University in 1888. See Millenary. CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION, Ixterna- TiON.L. An international exhibition of arts, manufactures, and jiroducts of the soil and mines, held in Philadelphia, Pa., from May 10 to Xovember 10, 1876. The exhibition was de- signed as a celebration of the one hundredth anni- versary of the Declaration of Independence, and to illustrate the ])rogress and industrial develop- ment which had taken place since that event. The project was originally pr-posed by an asso- ciation of citizens of Philadelphia in 1870, and was officialh- authorized by Congress on March .3, 1871, when a centennial commission, of which .loseph R. Hawley became president, was named by President Grant. This commission, on May 12, 1873, appointed Alfred T. Goshorn director- general, under whose immediate direction the various subordinate officers were then chosen. The funds for the exhibition were obtained from the following appropriations: Citv of Philadel- phia, .$1,.500,000; State of Pennsylvania. .$1,500,- 000: Congress, .$1,500,000; and private subscrip- tions, $2,300,000. A site in Fairmount Park, com- prising an area of 236 acres, was inclosed, within which more than 200 buildings were erected. Of these, the ilain Building, a structure of iron and glass, was designed for the exhibition of manu- factures, products of mines and metallurgy, and various objects showing the development of sci- ence and education of all nations. It covered an area of 20 acres, and was 1880 feet long by 464 feet wide; Machinery Hall, next in size, was 1402 feet long by 360 feet wide, and was constructed of wood, with iron ties and struts into large traces upon piers of solid masonry: .gricultural Hall was 820 feet long by 540 feet wide, and was of wood and glass: Horticultural Hall, of iron and glass, in the Moorish style of architecture, was 383 feet long by 103 feet wide: and Memorial Hall, of granite, glass, and iron, in the modem