Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/767

* CHIQUITO. 669 CHIRON. living in straw-thatched adobe houses, cultivat- ing cotton and sugar-cane and weaving ponchos and lianiniucks. CHIR IMOY'A. See Cuerimoyer. CHIROGALE, ki'ro-gal (from Gk. x'^P, vhcir, hand + yaXij. gale, weasel). A genus (Chirogaleus) ot ,<niall arboreal lemurs of Mad- agascar, which have the interesting habit of curling up in holes of trees and passing the drj' season in a state of torpidity. "Before this takes place an immense deposit of fat accumu- lates upon certain parts of the body, especially upon the basal portion of the tail, which by the time they emerge from their tor- por has acquired its normal proportions. The smallest species . . . live among the small branches on the tops of the highest trees, feed- ing on fruit and insect-s, and making nests which resemble those of birds." Lydekker, Mammals (London. 1S91). CHIROLEPIS, ki-rol'e-pis (Xeo-Lat., from Gk. x«'p. rheir, hand + eirls. lepis, scale). The earliest known ray-finned fish, found in the Devonian rocks of Europe and Xorth America. The body was slender, about 20 inches in length, and was covered by the regular rhomboidal ganoid scales, which in this genus were very small, and reinforced on their inner surfaces by vertical ridges. The skull had almost the nor- mal development of external bones, and the jaws were strong and well provided with teeth. The fins, which" had very finely divided rays, consisted of a pair of pectoral, a pair of pelvic, and an anal and dorsal fin, and the tail was lieterocenal. Chirolepis is a member of a heter- ogeneous family of fishes, the Palseoniscid*. that apparently gave rise to two widely divergent evolutional series — namely, to the progressive series of the teleosts on one hand, and on the other hand to the regressive or degenerate series terminating in the modern sturgeon. See Stur- geon: PAUT:rxiscis. CHIROMANCY, ki'rd-man'si (from Gk. xe'p, cheir, hand + liavrela. manlfin, divination), or Palmistry. The art of divination through the study of the pahn of the hand. The inter- pretative science of the hand in general is termed chirosophj-. It is divided into two branches — chirognomy, which is concerned with studying man's tendencies through the form of the hand and the fingers, and chiromancy, which pretends to foretell by inspecting the lines of the palm. Chiromancy is an ancient art which was known among the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Hebrews, and was cultivated by the philosophers Plato, Aristotle, .-Vntioehus, Ptolemy, and others. .Aristotle found on an altar dedicated to .pollo a treatise on chiro- mancy, written in letters of gold, and presented it to Alexander the Great as a gift worthy of his lofty mind. References to the subject are in Aristotle's fjixt. Animalium (i. 1.5). and in the Problemata and Pht/siorjnomica. doubtfully assigned to him. A reference in Juvenal (Sat. vi. 581 ) is evidence that the art was practiced among the Romans. That chiromancy was prac- ticed and accepted seriously in the Middle -Ages we know from frequent references to it in writ- ings of that period. .Albertus Magnus. Paraz-elsus, and Cardanus seem to have l>een greatly inter- ested in the subject. Later it became involved in jugglery, until in the Nineteenth Century it again received a certain amount of serious con- sideration, largely owing to the work of two Frenchmen — Adrien Adolphe DesbarroUes (1801- 70) and Casimir Stanislas d'Arjwntigny (born 17 1)8), an otBccr in the French Army. Palmistry treats mainly of the mounts of the hand, with the lines on them and the lines in- terlacing the i)alni. The left hand is usually the one studied, since it is less affected by use. There are seven moimts — that at the base of the first finger is the mount of Jupiter: the middle finger, the mount of Saturn : the ring finger, the mount of Apollo; the little finger the mount of Jlercury; beneath Mercury the mount of Mars; at the wrist, the mount of the Moon; and at the thumb, the mount of Venus. More important even than the mounts are the four great lines — the line of life, of the head, of the heart, and of fortune. The three first named suggest the letter M, and represent the trinity of human existence — sensation, in- telligence, and action. The line of life, which follows the mount of Venus and meets the line of the head, determines the length of life, possi- bility of illness, etc. The line of the head, which crosses the palm obliquely from .Jupiter to JIars, indicates the intellectual quality. The line of the heart, which crosses the hand horizontally from Jupiter to Mercury, indicates worth of character; the nearer the line approaches ,Iupi- ter the better the character. The line of fortune, which cuts the hand verticall.v, if clear and straight foretells a prosperous life. Other lines of special interest are the Venus line, the line of the liver, and line of Apollo. In general, the lines indicate the strength or weakness of ten- dencies, according to their length and clearness. Each mount indicates a certain qualitv; an absence of the mount, an absence of the quality. Jupiter normally developed indicates love of honor and a happy disposition ; Saturn, pru- dence and wisdom, and therefore success : Apollo, a love of the beautiful and noble aspirations; Mercury, a love of science, industry, and com- merce; Mars, courage and resolution; the Moon, a dreamy disposition and morality: Venus, a taste for beauty and a loving temperament. Be- side the mounts and the lines are squares, stars, circles, points, triangles, crosses, rings, branches, chains, forks, islands, etc., which corroborate or modify according to their situation the indica- tions deduced from the inspection of the mounts, the lines, and the form of the hand and the nails. BiBUOGRAPHY. D'Arpentignv. La rhirog- nomie (Paris, 1843): DesbarroUes. Les mys- teres de la main (Paris, 1879), and his Rcrela- tion.s eompleles (Paris, 1879) : Lenormand. No«- venirs prophet iques d'une sibylle (Paris. 1814) ; Firth and Heron Allen, Chiromancy, or the Sci- ence of Palmistry (London, 188.3); L. Cotton, Palmistry and Its Practical Uses (London, 1890) : Wood, Scientific Palmistry (London, 1900) ; Cheiro. Cheiro's Guide to the Hand (Xew York. 1898). See SUPERSTITION. CHIRON, kl'rfln (Lat., from Gk. XefpuK, Chciriin). The most famous of the Centaurs (q.v.). the son of Cronus and Philyra. He is dis- tinguished from the other Centaurs by his mild- ness and wisdom, and the general benevolence of his character. Often represented in works of art, these attributes of his are evident in a nobler and more human bearing. Many Greek heroes were