composition is hastened by the heaps being wet with the rains, are often seen in combustion from this cause. The liability to it seriously affects the value of those coals in which pyrites is found in considerable quantity, rendering it hazardous even to transport them by ships. In 1794 a fire occurred from this cause in the royal shipyard in Copenhagen, which consumed 1,600 tons of coal and 1,400 houses. The rapid absorption of water by quicklime is also attended with development of heat sufficient to ignite combustible bodies in contact with the lime. Freshly burned charcoal has the property of absorbing moisture and rapidly condensing it in its pores, generating thereby so much heat that it is set on fire. This often occurs about collieries and in the wagons used for transporting the coal from the woods, and is commonly attributed to the fire not being entirely extinguished in all the pieces of charcoal. Several cases are recorded in the "American Journal of Science" (vol. xlii., 1842, pp. 169 to 195) of combustion occurring in heaps of hard-wood ashes which had long lain undisturbed. The cause not being understood, they were in several instances regarded as cases of spontaneous combustion. It would seem, however, that addition of fresh ashes had been made to the heaps within a few days, or 14 at the most. Still no satisfactory explanation is given of the manner in which a heap of 25 bushels, accumulated during two years previous, could become completely ignited, as occurred in the cellar of President Lord of Dartmouth college; nor how the combustion could commence in the centre of a box of ashes which had received no addition for about two weeks, as described by Dr. J. T. Plummer of Richmond, Ind. Such instances, however they may be explained, exhibit the danger incurred by placing ashes in wooden vessels or in contact with combustible bodies; and the danger would appear to be at all times imminent, though the ashes may have thus remained quietly for two years.-Human Spontaneous Coinbustion. This is now generally believed to be a fiction; but it has been used with great effect by modern temperance lecturers and by novelists. Herman Melville so disposes of an obnoxious character in "Redburn" (1849); and Dickens, in "Bleak House" (1853), made the case of Krook famous, and excited an animated discussion which revived public interest in the subject. But that it has been firmly believed by many eminent medical authorities, and has been a matter of earnest though not entirely satisfactory inquiry by others, will be evident from the citation of the following authorities and cases. Foderé notes an instance which occurred in Lyons in 1644. Devergie, in his Médecine légale, records 20 cases, the earliest in 1692, and two thirds of them before the beginning of the present century. The Dictionnaire de Médecine, article Combustion humaine, cites the opinions of different writers down to the year 1833. Dr. Apjohn, in the

"Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine," gives what he considers authentic cases. The fullest information on the subject is in the Journal de Physique, in an article by Pierre Aimé Lair, translated and published in "Philosophical Transactions," vol. vi. Among the remarkable cases recorded are the following: Le Cat narrates that while he was lodging in the house of Millet at Rheims, on the morning of Feb. 20, 1725, the body of Mme. Millet, a habitual inebriate, was found at the distance of a foot and a half from the hearth in her kitchen. A part of the head only, with a portion of the lower extremities and a few of the vertebræ, had escaped combustion. A small portion of the floor under the body had been consumed, but a kneading trough and a tub which stood very near were uninjured. Millet was arrested for the murder of his wife, a supposed intrigue with his servant girl furnishing the motive. He was tried and convicted; but on appeal to a superior court he was acquitted on the plea of spontaneous combustion. A more celebrated case, six years later, was that of the countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenati, of Verona. She was 62 years old, and was accustomed to bathe in camphorated spirits of wine. Retiring one night in good health, the next morning her body was found on the floor, four feet from the bed, a mass of cinders. The walls and furniture of her room, and the walls, shelves, and utensils in an adjoining kitchen, were coated with a moist black soot, and a crust of bread was so contaminated that it was rejected by the cat. Prebendary Giuseppe Bianchini minutely investigated the case, and published an account of it at Verona in 1731, and afterward at Rome. It furnished, as is intimated in the preface to "Bleak House," the precedent for the remarkable death of Krook. "The appearances beyond all rational doubt observed in that case, says Dickens, the appearances observed in Mr. Krook's case. The case of Mary Clues first appeared in the "Annual Register" for 1773. She was 50 years old, and was much addicted to intoxication. One night she retired, leaving a lighted candle on a chair near her bed. The next morning her remains were found on the floor between the bed and the chimney. The skin, muscles, and viscera were destroyed; the bones of the cranium, breast, spine, and upper extremities were calcined and covered with a whitish efflorescence; one leg and a thigh were still entire. The room was filled with a very disagreeable vapor; the walls and everything in the room were blackened; but, except the body, nothing exhibited any very strong traces of fire. An almost parallel case is that of Grace Pitt, aged 60, published in the "Transactions of the Royal Society of London" in 1774. Foderé records the remarkable death of Don Gio Maria Bertholi, in 1776. The account is abridged by Paris and Fonblanque in their "Medical Jurisprudence," and the case is one of the best authenticated to be found.

are

In 1840 the Bulletin de Thérapeutique published an account by M. Bubbe-Liévin, surgeon in the army in Algeria in 1839, of the death of a Moor, a habitual drunkard, where the phenomenon was a bluish flame running all over the body, making frightful burns; but the surgeon saw only the results of the combustion, and derived the details from the natives, who probably embellished the facts. In 1839 Dupuytren investigated a supposed case of spontaneous combustion. The victim was an excessively fleshy woman, and addicted to drink; but Dupuytren discovered that she had been sitting over a foot stove filled with burning charcoal, and his theory was as follows: Stupor, due first to alcohol, and heightened by the fumes of the charcoal; the clothes take fire; the epidermis cracks open and streams of melted human fat run out and burn; combustion continues as long as any fragments of cloth saturated with fat remain unconsumed; the room is filled with dense black smoke; and, finally, the victim presents only a mass of charred flesh and bones. The case of the The case of the countess of Görlitz, found dead in her chamber, June 13, 1847, excited attention throughout Europe. The upper part of her dress was burned, and her head, neck, and arms were charred. The floor and furniture were much damaged by fire. The physician who examined the remains pronounced the case one of spontaneous combustion. In the year following, Aug. 11, the remains were exhumed, and Liebig and Bischoff, who examined them, published in 1850 their report, exploding the theory of spontaneous combustion. In March of that year Stauff, the count's valet, was tried and convicted for murdering the countess. Subsequently he confessed the crime, and said that the countess having surprised him in an attempt to rob her room, he strangled her, and afterward piled furniture around her body and set it on fire. In 1850 a supposed case had a wide circulation in the French and English journals, and was quoted by Dean in his "Medical Jurisprudence." It was that of a laborer, drinking in a cabaret near the barrière de l'Étoile, Paris. He wagered that he would eat a lighted candle, and had hardly brought it near his mouth when, with a faint cry, he fell lifeless. A bluish flame flickered about his lips, he consumed inwardly, and in half an hour his head and part of his chest were reduced to charcoal. On the publication of this extraordinary case, Liebig at once wrote to Professors Regnault and Pélouze, and to Carlier, the prefect of police, asking for further information. This he immediately received from Carlier, to the effect that the case was wholly imaginary, originating only in the fertile fancy of a sensational journalist. In two cases in England, one in 1854 and the other in 1860, where all the accepted phenomena of spontaneous combustion were present, rigid examination by experts discovered that the victims had been murdered, and an

attempt made to burn the bodies to conceal the crime. But in the apparently authenticated cases cited above, as the victims were generally drunkards, the hypothesis has been that their bodies were rendered exceptionally combustible, and for a long while this theory obtained credence. But after a while chemists began to discredit the cases. It was shown that combustion could not occur without an abundant supply of oxygen; that the soft parts of the human body contain 72 per cent. of water, which must be evaporated before consumption by fire can take place; and instances of the extraordinary difficulty of consuming the bodies of persons burned at the stake were adduced. It is noteworthy, too, that nearly all of the supposed authentic cases agree essentially in the following particulars: That the victim is almost always a fat woman, an inebriate, and in some instances addicted to getting up in the night to smoke a pipe, or to sit by the fire; nine out of ten of the supposed cases have occurred in cold weather; and in nearly every case the remains were found near a grate, fireplace, or candle. Dr. Robert Macnish, in his "Anatomy of Drunkenness " (Edinburgh, 1827), says that when "writers like Vicq d'Azyr, Le Cat, Maffei, Jacobæus, Rolli, Bianchini, and Mason and Good, have given their testimony in support of such facts, it requires some effort to believe them unfounded in truth." But he thinks that the witnesses in supposed cases "have been led into an unintentional misrepresentation," and says further: "The subject has never been satisfactorily investigated; and notwithstanding the cases brought forward in support of the doctrine, the general opinion seems to be that the whole is fable, or at least so much involved in obscurity as to afford no just grounds for belief." This was written long before the thorough examinations by Liebig, Bischoff, and other experts, since 1850, whose reports are decidedly adverse to the hypothesis of spontaneous human combustion.

COMEDY. See DRAMA.

COMENIUS, John Amos, a Czech, whose real name was KOMENSKY, remarkable for his early attempts at reforming education, born at Komna in Moravia, March 28, 1592, died in Holland, Nov. 15, 1671. He studied in Heidelberg and Herborn, and was a teacher in Prerau and Fulneck from 1614 to 1620, when, in the general persecution of Protestants which followed the reverses of the insurgents in Bohemia and Moravia, he lost all his fortune and was expatriated, and for some time lived as a teacher in a retired part of the Bohemian mountains. From 1632 he was pastor of the sect of the Bohemian Brethren at Lissa, then in Poland. In 1641 he was invited to England to reform the schools, in which however he did not succeed, on account of the civil dissensions. At the request of Oxenstiern he now applied himself to the organization of a system for Swedish schools, though residing in Elbing, W.

Prussia. He subsequently repaired to Transyl- | vania, and in 1650 elaborated rules for the Protestant college of Sáros-Patak in Hungary. Returning to Lissa in 1654, he again lost all his books, manuscripts, and fortune by the Polish war of 1657, and spent the latter part of his life in Holland. As a writer in the Czech language he is highly esteemed for his classical style. As a school reformer he was the forerunner of Rousseau, Basedow, and Pestalozzi, suggested a mode of instruction which renders learning attractive by pictures and illustrations, and wrote the first pictorial school book, Orbis Sensualium Pictus (Nuremberg, 1658). For instruction in foreign languages he recommended combining with the teaching of the foreign words explanations of the ideas they express. His most celebrated works in this department, Janua Linguarum Reserrata (Lissa, 1631), and Pansophiæ Prodromus (Lissa, 1639),. were translated into many languages. COMET (Gr. KoμÝτns, long-haired), a celestial body presenting a nebulous aspect, and travelling under the sun's attraction. Many of these bodies are distinguished by a remarkable taillike appendage. The greater number of those hitherto known have revolved round the sun on a path whose observed portion belonged to an exceedingly elongated ellipse, or was even parabolic or hyperbolic. A few, however, travel in closed orbits around the sun in known periods. It has been supposed that some among the ancients suspected the periodic motions of the planets; but the only evidence we have on the subject is vague and indefinite. Tycho Brahe was the first to prove by direct observation that comets are not mere phenomena of our own atmosphere, but certainly further away than the moon. Newton, after establishing the theory of gravitation, asserted that comets obey the laws of solar attraction, and therefore move either on elliptic, parabolic, or hyperbolic paths. From observations of the comet of 1680 (commonly called Newton's comet) Dörfel, a clergyman of Saxony, was led to the conclusion that the course of this object was parabolic. But the first real proof of the nature of cometary orbits was afforded by the researches of Halley into the motions of the comet of 1682 (Halley's comet). Halley computed the orbit of this comet, and having found that the figure of the orbit was either parabolic or a very extended ellipse, he examined the records of ancient comets, and after incredible labor succeeded in discovering two whose motions agreed very closely with those of the comet of 1682. One had been observed by Appian in 1531, the other by Kepler in 1607; and Halley noticed that the intervals between the three years 1531, 1607, and 1682 are near enough to equality to suggest that one and the same comet had been observed on all three occasions. Finding that comets were observed in 1305, 1380, and 1456, he was further confirmed in the idea of the periodicity of this comet's returns; and he was thus led to pre

dict the return of the comet about the end of 1758 or the beginning of 1759. He placed the return somewhat later than the former observed intervals would have suggested, because he found that the attraction of Jupiter would retard the comet. When the time for its return approached, many eminent mathematicians recomputed the date of its perihelion passage, and Clairaut announced that this passage would occur between March 13 and May 13, 1759. The event actually took place on March 13, 1759; and it has been shown that a large part of the discrepancy between this date and the mean date of Clairaut's two months would have been removed had Clairaut known of the existence of Uranus, and so taken the disturbing influence of that planet into account. On the next return of the comet in 1835, the epoch of perihelion passage was predicted much more accurately; indeed, the actual event occurred within two or three days of the dates severally announced by Pontécoulant and Rosenberger. The observations of other comets have still further confirmed Newton's theory of cometic motions.-All comets show a coma or haze of light. In nearly all cases there is a bright nucleus within this haze, and in a considerable number of instances, but not by any means in all, the comet shows a tail. When a large and complete comet, that is, a comet which possesses a coma, nucleus, and tail, is approaching the sun, the haze of light usually changes from a rounded to an elongated figure. Afterward the comet's light presents a streaky or "combed out" appearance, and then presently a tail is thrown out on the side away from the sun. The tail usually grows longer and brighter as the comet approaches the sun, and continues in existence for some time after the comet has begun to pass away from the sun's neighborhood. But there is a considerable variety in this respect among different comets. Some which have shown beautiful tails as they neared the sun, have reappeared after the perihelion passage with only a short tail or without any tail at all. Others which have shown only insignificant tails while approaching their perihelion, have "reappeared magnified and glorified, throwing out an immense tail and exhibiting every appearance of violent excitement." Most of the comets of short period are tailless or have tails barely discernible. An examination of the drawings prepared for the third volume of the "Annals of the Observatory of Harvard College," to accompany the record of Prof. Bond's observations on Donati's comet of 1858, will teach more respecting the actual processes of change which large comets undergo than any amount of verbal description. It has been justly remarked by Sir John Herschel that these "engravings, in point of exquisite finish and beauty of delineation, leave far behind everything hitherto done in that department of astronomy."-Among the comets most remarkable either for great splendor or enormous real dimensions in recent times

must be mentioned those of 1780, 1807, 1811, 1815, 1819, 1825, 1843, 1847, 1858, and 1861. Among the most remarkable phenomena presented by individual comets we may mention the six tails of the great comet of 1744, and the division of Biela's comet into two distinct comets, each having coma, nucleus, and tail. The latter phenomenon was first observed on Jan. 12, 1846, at the Washington observatory. Three days later European observers noted the same phenomenon. The two comets pursued their course side by side, with singular interchanges of lustre, now one, now the other appearing the brighter. At the return of the comet in 1852 both the comets were still visible in the same telescopic field of view. The perihelion passage of 1859 took place (if at all) under circumstances unfavorable for observation. The return of 1865 should have been readily observable; but the comet was not seen, nor has it since made its appearance. "Can it have come," says Sir John Herschel, "into contact with some asteroid as yet undiscovered, or peradventure plunged into and got bewildered among the rings of meteorites, which astronomers more than suspect? "The recent discovery of the fact that the November and August meteor systems follow in the track of two comets (the November meteors following the telescopic comet No. I., 1866, and the August meteors following the conspicuous comet of 1862), has led to some interesting speculations respecting the nature of comets and meteors. Schiaparelli, to whom the discovery is in part due, considers the meteors to be dispersed portions of the comet's original substance, that is, of the substance with which the comet entered the solar domain. Thus comets would come to be regarded as consisting of a multitude of relatively minute masses. Others, however, regard comets as chiefly gaseous, and the meteors as due to the solidification of portions of the gaseous coma which have been swept off by the repulsive action which forms the tail. Spectroscopic analysis has thrown some light on cometic structure, though hitherto only faint comets have been subject to careful analysis according to recent methods. Four comets examined by Dr. Huggins of England showed spectra indicative of gaseousness, so far as the nucleus and the brighter part of the coma are concerned. The outer part of the coma seems to shine in part by reflecting solar light. Two of the comets thus examined have shown a spectrum singularly like one of the spectra of carbon. Yet it is difficult to understand how carbon can be present in the form of luminous gas under the conditions actually existing in the case of these comets. The spectroscopic observations by Dr. Huggins on the latest arrival, Encke's comet, have been in all respects confirmed by Prof. Young of Dartmouth college. The mo- | tions of Encke's comet, observed on many successive returns, seem to indicate the existence of a resisting medium; but Sir John Herschel

|

has suggested another explanation; and Prof. Asaph Hall has shown in the "American Journal of Science and Arts" for December, 1871, that if resistance is actually in question, such resistance affects Encke's comet in an exceptional manner, for other well known periodic comets show no traces of its effects. All the comets having a period not exceeding seven years' travel in the same direction around the sun as the planets. Among comets with periods less than 80 years long, five sixths travel in the same direction as the planets.

COMFREY (symphytum officinale), a plant of the order borraginaceae, a native of Europe, but raised in our gardens. It was formerly imagined to promote the healing of wounds, or even of broken bones, a superstition of which

Comfrey (Symphytum officinale).

traces have remained until the present time. Its virtues are simply those of a demulcent.

COMINES, or Comynes, Philippe de, a French statesman and historian, born at the château of Comines, near Lille, in 1445, died at his domain of Argenton in 1509. He stood high in the favor of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and on occasion of Louis XI.'s imprisonment by Charles at Péronne succeeded in bringing about a treaty of peace between them. In 1472 he forsook the cause of the duke of Burgundy and became councillor and chamberlain of Louis XI., who compensated him so amply for the loss of his property, which had been confiscated by Charles, that he soon became one of the most wealthy and influential noblemen in France. The death of Louis, however, proved fatal to his fortunes. He was no favorite with Anne de Beaujeu, the regent, and was imprisoned on a charge of conspiracy against her. On the accession of Charles VIII. he was again employed in the public service, but went into retirement after the advent of Louis XII., who seemed reluctant to favor him, although he left him in possession of a pension. The fame of Comines rests not only upon his astuteness as a statesman, but still

more upon his Mémoires, which give a complete view of the political affairs of his time, and present a vivid picture of the character of Louis XI. They have been frequently printed. Lenglet Dufresnoy's edition (4 vols. 4to, London, 1747) is especially valuable on account of its annotations; but the best and most recent is that published by Mlle. Dupont for the society of French history (3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1850). Comines figures in Scott's romance of "Quentin Durward."

COMITAN, or Comitlan, a town in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, on the river Grijalva, an affluent of the Tabasco, about 40 m. S. E. of San Cristóbal; pop. 10,000. It is well built, and has a fine church and a large Dominican convent, and some trade in cochineal, sugar, and cotton. Its inhabitants are generally in prosperous circumstances, living on the incomes of their haciendas in the neighborhood, which they cultivate by the labor of Indians. COMITIA, the public assemblies of the Roman people for the transaction of important political business. There were three different kinds of comitia, corresponding to the three great divisions of the Romans: the comitia curiata, the comitia centuriata, and the comitia tributa. The comitia curiata, or assemblies of the curia, were the original assemblies said to have been instituted by Romulus, and managed all the great concerns of state prior to the establishment of the comitia centuriata. They elected the kings and other chief magistrates, enacted and abrogated laws, and judged capital of fenders. After the institution of the comitia centuriata, their prerogatives were gradually abridged, till almost all the great powers which they once exercised were wrested from them, and hardly any remained with them, save those minor ones which they had possessed from the beginning, in common with the higher rights annulled. The comitia curiata were originally called together by the kings, but in republican times generally by some great secular or sacerdotal magistrate. They were composed of those Roman citizens who were members of the curiæ, dwelt within the pomerium, and conformed to the customs and rights of their respective wards. The meetings were not held periodically, but as often as there was business to transact. When the members were assembled, and the omens propitious, the rogatio, or matter to be considered, was read, and then each curia, after deciding apart on the question, gave its vote, and the votes of the majority of the curia determined the fate of the measure, or, if it was a case of election, that of the candidates. These assemblies were held in that part of the forum called the comitium. The comitia centuriata were instituted by Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome, with the view apparently of uniting in one body the different sections of the Roman people. Having compelled every man to give in an accurate account of his property, he divided the citizens into six classes, according to their wealth,

which he subdivided, according to Dionysius, into 193 centuries. Of these centuries he composed the comitia centuriata, which were held in the Campus Martius, for the election of consuls, censors, and prætors, for the trial of persons accused of what was termed crimen perduellionis, or treason, and for the confirmation or rejection of such laws as might be submitted to their consideration. The most usual time of meeting was about the end of July or beginning of August in each year. When the centuries were assembled, they cast lots for priority of suffrage, and the century to which the lot fell voted first, and was styled centuria prærogativa. All the others voted in the order of their classes, and as they were summoned, and were thence termed jure vocata. The presiding magistrate having ordered the prerogative century to be called out to give their suffrages, its members came forward and entered an enclosed space named septum or ovile, where, if it was a case of election, every man received as many tablets as there were candidates, every tablet having inscribed on it the initial letters of one candidate's name. The septa contained numerous large ballot boxes, and into one of these the voter cast that tablet which bore the initials of the name of the candidate whom he favored. If, however, it was a question of the confirmation or rejection of a law, only two tablets were handed to each voter, on one of which were written U. R., the initial letters of Uti rogas, "As thou desirest," and on the other A., the first letter of Antiquo, "For the old," i. e., the old law (against the new). At each ballot box were stationed certain officers called custodes, who took the tablets of every century out of the ballot box, and numbered them by putting a puncture in another tablet for every one deposited. Before the introduction of the ballot system, however, when every citizen voted viva voce, an officer called a rogator, stationed at the entrance of the septum, asked each individual for his vote. In the election of magistrates, or the confirmation or rejection of laws, equality of suffrages nullified the vote of the century; but in juridical cases equality of suffrages was deemed an acquittal of the accused. The comitia tributa, or assemblies of the tribes, were not established till 491 B. C. They were sometimes presided over by the tribunes of the people, sometimes by the consuls or prætors, and were summoned for the election of tribunes, ædiles, quæstors, and other inferior magistrates, for the trial of minor criminals, and for the enactment of special and general statutes. Their place of meeting was not fixed; occasionally they were convened in the Campus Martius, occasionally in the forum, and at times in the circus Flaminius. These were the democratic comitia. Their laws were termed plebiscita, or decrees of the plebs, and, unlike the other comitia, they could be called together without the sanction of the senate. Besides these great assem