The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 154

DAPHNIS, a Sicilian shepherd, the mythical inventor of pastoral poetry.

DAPSANG, the highest of the Karakorum Mountains.

D'ARBLAY, MADAME, a distinguished novelist, daughter of Dr. Burney, the historian of music; auth.o.r.ess of "Evelina" and "Cecilia," the first novels of the time, which brought her into connection with all her literary contemporaries, Johnson in chief; left "Diary and Letters"

(1752-1840).

DARBOY, GEORGES, archbishop of Paris: was a defender of the Gallican liberties of the Church; had been a.s.siduous in offices of benevolence during the siege of Paris; was arrested as a hostage by the Communists, and shot (1813-1871).

DARBY AND JOAN, a married couple celebrated for their mutual attachment.

DARBYITES, the PLYMOUTH BRETHREN (q. v.), from the name of one of their founders, a man of scholarly ability and culture, and the chief expounder of their views (1800-1852).

DARDANELLES, a strait extending between the Archipelago and the Sea of Marmora, anciently called the h.e.l.lespont, 40 m. long, from 1 to 4 broad; commanded by Turkey, both sides of the strait being strongly fortified.

DARDa.n.u.s, a son of Zeus and Electra, mythical ancestor of the Trojans; originally a king in Greece.

DARFUR (500), a district in the Egyptian Soudan, in which vegetation is for the most part dormant all the year round, except from June to September, when it is rank and rich; was s.n.a.t.c.hed from Egypt by the Mahdi, but is now restored.

D'ARGENS, MARQUIS, born at Aix; disinherited owing to his misconduct; turned author, and became a protege of Frederick the Great, but lost caste with him too, and was deprived of his all once more (1704-1771).

D'ARGENSON, COMTE, an eminent French statesman, head of the police in Paris; introduced _lettres de cachet_, and was a patron of the French philosophes; had the "Encyclopedie" dedicated to him; fell out of favour at Court, and had to leave Paris, but returned to die there (1696-1764).

DARIC, a gold coin current in ancient Persia, stamped with an archer kneeling, and weighing little over a sovereign.

DARIEN, GULF OF, an inlet of the Caribbean Sea, NW. of S. America.

For isthmus of, see PANAMA.

DARIEN SCHEME, a project to plant a colony on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, which was so far carried out that some 1200 left Scotland in 1698 to establish it, but which ended in disaster, and created among the Scotch, who were the chief sufferers, an animus against the English, whom they blamed for the disaster, an animus which did not for long die out.

DARIUS I., eldest son of Hystaspes, king of the Persians; subdued subject places that had revolted, reorganised the empire, carried his conquests as far as India, subdued Thrace and Macedonia, declared war against the Athenians; in 492 B.C. sent an expedition against Greece, which was wrecked in a storm off Athos; sent a second, which succeeded in crossing over, but was defeated in a famous battle at Marathon, 490 B.C.

DARIUS II., called OCHUS or NOTHUS, king of the Persians; subject to his eunuchs and his wife Parysatis; his reign was a succession of insurrections; he supported the Spartans against the Athenians, to the ascendency of the former in the Peloponnesus; _d_. 405 B.C.

DARIUS III., surnamed CODOMANNUS, king of the Persians, a handsome man and a virtuous; could not cope with Alexander of Macedon, but was defeated by him in successive engagements at Granicus, Issus, and Arbela; was a.s.sa.s.sinated on his flight by BESSUS (q. v.), one of his satraps, in 330 B.C.; with him the Persian empire came to an end.

DARJEELING (14), a sanitary station and health resort in the Lower Himalayas, and the administrative head-quarters of the district, 7167 ft.

above the level of the sea; it has greatly increased of late years.

DARLEY, GEORGE, poet and critic, born in Dublin; author of "Sylvia"

and "Nepenthe"; wrote some good songs, among them "I've been Roaming,"

once very popular; much belauded by Coleridge; contributed to the _Athenaeum_ (1795-1846).

DARLING, a tributary of the Murray River, in Australia, now stagnant, now flooded.

DARLING, GRACE, a young maiden, daughter of the lighthouse keeper of one of the Farne Islands, who with her father, amid great peril, saved the lives of nine people from the wreck of the _Forfars.h.i.+re_, on Sept. 7, 1838; died of consumption (1815-1842).

DARLINGTON (38), a town in S. of Durham, on the Tees, with large iron and other works; a considerable number of the inhabitants belong to the Society of Friends.

DARMESTETER, JAMES, Orientalist, born in Lorraine, of Jewish descent; a distinguished Zend scholar and authority in Zend literature; in the interpretation of the Zend and other ancient literatures was of the modern critical school (1849-1894).

DARMSTADT (55), the capital of the grand-duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, on the Darm, an affluent of the Rhine, 15 m. S. of Frankfort; is divided into an old and a new town; manufactures tobacco, paper, carpets, chemicals, &c.

DARNLEY, HENRY STUART, LORD, eldest son of the Earl of Lennox and grand-nephew of Henry VIII.; husband of Queen Mary; was murdered on Feb.

5, 1567, in Kirk-o'-Field, which stood on the site of the present University of Edinburgh.

DARTMOOR, moor in Devons.h.i.+re, a tableland of an average height of 1200 ft. above the sea-level, and of upwards of 120,000 acres in extent, incapable of cultivation, but affording pasturage for sheep, of which it breeds a small hardy race; it has rich veins of minerals; abounds in British remains, and contains a large convict prison.

DARU, COMTE, a French administrator and litterateur, born at Montpellier; translated Horace when in prison during the Reign of Terror; served as administrator under Napoleon; on the return of the Bourbons devoted himself to letters, and wrote the "History of the Republic of Venice" (1767-1829).

DARWIN, CHARLES ROBERT, great English naturalist and biologist, born at Shrewsbury, grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father's side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's; studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge; in 1831 accompanied as naturalist without salary the _Beagle_ in her voyage of exploration in the Southern Seas, on the condition that he should have the entire disposal of his collections, all of which he got, and which he ultimately distributed among various public inst.i.tutions; he was absent from England for five years, and on his return published in 1836 his "Naturalist's Voyage Round the World," in 1839-43 accounts of the fruits of his researches and observations in the departments of geology and natural history during that voyage, in 1842 his treatise on the "Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs," and in 1859 his work on the "Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," a work which has proved epoch-making and gone far to revolutionise thought in the scientific study of, especially, animated nature, and is being applied to higher spheres of being; this work was followed by others more or less confirmatory, finis.h.i.+ng off with "The Descent of Man" in 1871, in which he traces the human race to an extinct quadrumanous animal related to that which produced the orang-outang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla. He may be said to have taken evolution out of the region of pure imagination, and by giving it a basis of fact, to have set it up as a reasonable working hypothesis. Prof. A. R. Wallace claims for Darwin "that he is the Newton of natural history, and has ... by his discovery of the law of natural selection and his demonstration of the great principles of the preservation of useful variations in the struggle for life, not only thrown a flood of light on the process of development of the whole organic world, but also established a firm foundation for the future study of nature." He was buried in Westminster Abbey (1809-1882).

DARWIN, ERASMUS, physician and natural philosopher, born in Nottinghams.h.i.+re; studied at Cambridge and Edinburgh; practised medicine in Lichfield, and finally settled in Derby; occupied his mind with the study of fanciful a.n.a.logies in the different spheres of nature, and committed his views, often not without genuine poetic sentiment and melody of expression, to verse, while in the views themselves there have been recognised occasional glimpses of true insight, and at times a foreshadow of the doctrine developed on strict scientific lines by his ill.u.s.trious grandson. His chief poetic works were the "Botanic Garden"

and the "Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life," deemed, in the philosophy of them, not unworthy of criticism by such sane thinkers as Paley and Dugald Stewart (1731-1802).

DARWINIAN THEORY, the theory established by Darwin that the several species of plants and animals now in existence were not created in their present form, but have been evolved by natural law of descent, with modifications of structure, from cruder forms. See DARWIN, C. R.

DASENT, SIR GEORGE WEBBE, Icelandic scholar, born at St. Vincent, West Indies; studied at Oxford; from 1845 to 1870 was a.s.sistant-editor of the _Times_; has translated "The Prose, or Younger, Edda" and Norse tales and sagas; written also novels, and contributed to reviews and magazines; _b_. 1817.