Account of the Average Prices of British Wheat | furnished, and whence it derives its name. per Quarter, in England and Wales, since 1771, as ascertained by the Receiver of Corn Returns. Cornaceae (Cornus, one of the genera). A small natural order of epigynous Exogens, of the Umbellal alliance, formerly associated with Caprifoliacea, but now separated on account of their polypetalous structure. They are known by their two (or more) celled fruit without a double epigynous disc, their tetramerous flowers, valvate corolla, and opposite leaves without stipules. Some North American species of Cornus are valuable as tonics. Cornbrash. A member of the lower part of the great oolitic series of England, made up of rotten impure limestone decomposing into a good wheat soil. [BRASH.] Cornea (Lat. horny). The transparent membrane of a horny texture which forms the anterior part of the eyeball. In vertebrates it is simple in insects it is subdivided into numerous hexagonal segments. Cornet (Ital. cornetta, a small flag). A commissioned officer in the cavalry, corresponding in rank with the ensign of infantry. The standard used to be carried by the cornet-hence the name of the latter-but is now carried by a troop sergeant-major. CORNET. In Music, a shrill wind instrument formed of wood, which appears to have been in use in the earliest times, and remained so till about the commencement of the eighteenth century, when it was displaced by the oboe. Cornet-à-Pistons (Fr.). A brass wind musical instrument, of the French horn species, but capable of much greater completeness of scale and perfection of intonation from the valves and stoppers (pistons) with which it is The tribe of instruments to which this belongs has of late years been much improved, principally by Messrs. Sax of Paris, and Messrs. Distin of London. There are now four or five grades of instruments of this class, which take different parts respectively, forming, in the whole, a perfect band of themselves, and capable of playing almost any kind of music. The cornet-à-pistons is the treble instrument, and there are others for the alto, tenor, baritone, and bass parts, gradually increasing in size, but all on the same general construction. They are much used for military bands, and for music played in the open air. Cornice (Fr. corniche, Ital. cornice). In Architecture, the upper great division of an entablature [ENTABLATURE], consisting of several members. Cornin. A bitter crystalline matter obtained from the bark of the Cornus florida. Cornish Diamonds. Transparent colourless Rock Crystals found in Cornwall. Corns. Thickenings of the cuticle of the toes, of a horny texture, arising from continued pressure over a projection of bone. One of the best and simplest remedies for this painful disorder is to wear upon the toe or part affected a piece of leather, spread with diachylon or other emollient plaster, and having a hole in it corresponding with the size of the corn. By this means all pressure upon the corn is avoided. (Sir B. Brodie's Lecture on Corns and Bunions, Medical Gazette, Feb. 13, 1836.) Cornstone. The lower member of the old red sandstone, or middle Paleozoic series of rocks, as developed in Herefordshire and the adjoining counties. The name was given from the fertility of the soil derived from this rock, which there consists of a mixture of sandstones and impure concretionary limestones, readily decomposing into a good material for all the corn crops. These cornstones repose on imperfect flags, some of which are extensively quarried. Cornu Ammonis (Lat.). A name sometimes applied to the fossil shells called Ammonites. Cornua (Lat.). In Zoology, hard and more or less elongated processes projecting from the head. [HORN.] The term is usually applied to such processes in the class Mammalia, in which they serve as weapons of offence and defence. These weapons consist either of bone, when they are called antlers; or of horn, or of bone and horn, or lastly of bone and hairy skin. The first kind of horns are peculiar to the deer tribe; the second to the rhinoceros; the third to the sheep, ox, and antelope tribes; and the fourth to the giraffe. The bony horns, antlers, cerata, or cornua solida, as they are technically termed, during the whole period of their formation resemble the horns of the giraffe, inasmuch as they are covered with a hairy and highly vascular integument: the bony material of these processes is in fact secreted by the vessels of that integument, so that their coexist to the roughened surface of the bone beneath. The horn of the rhinoceros differs from that of other mammalia in being situated upon the median line of the forehead; so that when there are two, they are placed one behind the other, and not laterally and symmetrically, as in the ruminants. A few ruminants have naturally two pairs of horns; and this was the case with a great extinct species, Sivatherium, whose remains have been discovered in the Himalayan mountainous regions, where the small Antilope quadricornis still exists. Horns are characterised in zoological descriptions according to their position, as Cornua nasalia, frontalia, parietalia, &c.: or according to their direction, as Cornua prona, turned forwards; reclinata, turned back; incurva, bent inwards; vara, bent outwards; redunca, with the apices curved forwards; lyrata, when they represent the horns of the ancient lyre; gyrata, when spirally twisted: or according to their period of existence, as Cornua perennia, when they last the lifetime of the animal; or Cornua decidua, or annua, when annually shed: lastly, horns are termed Cornua ossea, Cornua solida, cava, according to their structure, as above described. For the peculiarities of the giraffe's horns, see GIRAFFE. ence is essential as long as growth proceeds. When their growth is completed, and the antlers have arrived at their characteristic size and figure (which in the elk and Wapiti deer are truly remarkable), the determination of blood to the parts gradually lessens; the vessels shrink; the circulation in the formative membrane is at length suppressed; and the tegument then shrivels, dries, cracks, and is rubbed off by the instinctive actions which the deer now almost ceaselessly performs with his newly acquired and consolidated antlers. The skin and periosteum of the head, once continuous with those of the antler, now terminate at an abrupt line at the base of the antler, from which a ridge of bone, or burr, as it is termed, is developed, apparently for the purpose of defending the margin of the persistent integument; for when this is continued, as in the Munt-jac deer, half-way up the antlers, the burr is developed immediately above its termination, or at the middle, and not at the base of the antlers. Some physiologists have conjectured that the use of the burr was to compress the vessels of the periosteum of the antler, and that its formation was deferred to near the completion of the antler; but observation shows that it commences at an earlier period of growth; and sound physiology teaches that the cessation, like the commencement, of the growth of the horn, must be the result of deeper and more constitutional operations. The most remarkable fact in the economy of antlers is that they are shed and renewed annually, the fall of the horns being concomitant with the shedding of the hair. The attempts to assign the final cause of this phenomenon have not been very successful. In the axis deer, e.g., the bucks do not all shed their horns at the same time, but at different periods of the year. In the rein-mollusca retractile feelers or eye-stalks are deer the branches which project forwards from the base of the horn, or the brow antlers, are habitually used to scrape away the snow which conceals the lichens on which they principally feed. The female, therefore, needs antlers as much as the male, and she has them; but this is a rare and singular exception, for the females of other species of deer are destitute of these ornamental weapons. True horns, or those which consist either partly or entirely of horny material, are never shed. In the antelopes they are in almost all cases confined to the male, and their bony basis is generally solid; in sheep and oxen the horns are commonly present in both sexes, and the bony basis is hollow. The term cornua cava is, however, usually applied to all horns consisting of bone and horn, and reciprocally the ruminants having such horns are termed hollow-horned. But this extension of the term seems to have arisen Corolla (Lat. a garland). That envelope of from a consideration of the external horny a flower which is placed next within the calyx. sheath alone, which is but a part, and that not It is usually more richly coloured and larger the most essential, of the horn. The horn or than the latter, but is extremely variable in horns of the rhinoceros consist of an aggluti- this respect. Owing to its being in many plants nation of horny fibres, which are attached only one of the most striking parts of the flower, it to the integument; the integument adhering is much employed by botanists in their systewith more than usual firmness at this part matical arrangements, and by the French school Certain species of many other classes have parts projecting from the head, analogous in form or structure to the cornua of the mammalia. The frontal protuberance of the emeu, hornbill, and helmeted curassow consists of bore covered with a sheath of horn; the kamichi or horned screamer is a still more remarkable example of a bird so armed. In reptiles we find horned toads, vipers, and iguanas. Fishes present divers simulations of true horns. In commonly called horns, as in the snail; but the appendages which would come under the general definition of our present term arrive at their maximum relative size, variety, and singularity of form in the class of insects. Cornucopia (Lat. cornucopiæ, horn of plenty). In the Fine Arts, an ornament representing a horn, from which issue flowers, fruits, leaves, and the like. The fable accounting for the origin of this emblem of Plenty, is that Amalthea, when one of her goats had broken off a horn against a tree, presented it to the infant Zeus (Jupiter) wreathed with flowers and filled with fruit. The cornucopia is found very frequently in the types of ancient coins, particularly upon those of Sicily. (See the medal of Arsinoe.) Cornwallite. An amorphous arsenate of copper found in Cornwall. COROLLARY CORPORATION has been taken as the means of forming funda- | bodies of such as either die or are supposed mental characters of the subclasses in the great to die a violent death (4 Edw. I. st. 2); for Dicotyledonous division; but there is no doubt which purpose he is empowered to summon that its importance for this purpose has been jurymen out of the neighbourhood, and witmuch overrated. Theoretically considered, the nesses. Should violent death be occasioned by corolla is composed of modified leaves, with the any personal chattel, it was forfeitable as a ordinary organisation of which its parts or deodand to the crown until the abolition of petals correspond as much as can be expected deodands by 9 and 10 Vict. c. 62. The coof rudimentary organs. Its physiological action roner was originally in some sort the colis to absorb oxygen, without decomposing car-league and assistant of the sheriff, and in bonic acid, in which respect it agrees with leaves in their morbid state in the autumn. Corollary (Lat. corolla, dim. of corona, a crown). In Mathematics, denotes any consequence immediately deducible from the demonstration of a proposition. All the corollaries in our editions of Euclid have been inserted by editors; they constitute, in fact, so many new propositions differing from the original ones merely in the fact that the demonstrations have been omitted. Had Euclid thought fit to make a greater demand on the intelligence of his readers, many of his propositions might assuredly have been given as corollaries. Corona (Lat.). In Architecture, the flat, square, massy member of a cornice, very frequently called the drift or larmier; its situation is between the cymatium above and the bedmoulding below, and its use is to carry the water, drop by drop, from the building. CORONA. An appearance seen round the sun in total eclipses of that body. [SUN.] his default might still act as sheriff in the execution of writs, which in such case would be directed to him. The county coroner is still, as the sheriff was formerly, elected by the freeholders of the county. Generally there are four or six for each county; and coroners may now also be appointed for districts in their counties. Borough coroners are also appointed in towns having quarter sessions. Coroners are remunerated by fees under Acts of Parliament. Coronet (Lat. corona). In Heraldry, an inferior crown belonging to the British nobility. The figure of John of Eltham, second son of Edward II., who died in 1334, affords the earliest representation of this ornament. Barons do not appear to have borne them earlier than the reign of Charles II. The time at which the coronets of the present orders of nobility were respectively distinguished in the existing fashion cannot be ascertained. Coronet-bone. The second of the conŝolidated phalanges of the horse's foot. Corporal (Ital. caporale, from capo, the head). A non-commissioned officer in the army, next in rank to a sergeant. He is distinguished by two chevrons or stripes worn on Corona or Coronet. This word is employed by botanists to express certain appendages of the corolla, which are arranged within it in a circle. In the Narcissus it is a cup; in Symphytum it consists of five glandular narrow processes; in Asclepias it is a thick fleshy the arm. ring extended into bended lobes. In all cases the coronet is a modification of sterile stamens. Corona Australis and Corona Borealis (Lat. the southern crown and northern crown). Two of the old constellations of Ptolemy; the first in the southern and the second in the northern hemisphere. Corona Dentis (Lat.). In Zoology, the exposed part of a tooth, which projects beyond the alveolus and gum. Coronamen (Lat.). In Zoology, the superior margin of a hoof, called in veterinary surgery the coronet. Coronary (Lat. coronarius, relating to a crown). Coronary vessels and ligaments are those which spread round certain viscera, bones, &c. Coronation. [KING.] Coroner (Lat. coronator). Is the title of an office established before the Norman Conquest, of which the holder was, as his name indicates, in a peculiar manner the officer of the crown, whose private rights of property, whether arising by escheat, wardship, or consisting in demesne, it was his business to maintain and superintend in the county for which he acted. Connected in some degree with this character is the more important if not the sole function which he now exercises: that of holding inquests on the Corporal Punishment. In the Army, is inflicted on the bare back with a cat-o'-ninetails. It is limited in amount to fifty lashes, and, by a rule lately made, every soldier is exempt from liability to it until by gross misconduct he forfeits that exemption; and even after thus forfeiting his right to exemption he is liable to corporal punishment only for grave offences, while one year's good conduct restores him to his original position. Corporation (Lat. corpus, body). A body politic or incorporate; consisting of a person or persons having power to take and grant, &c., to himself or themselves and their successors. Corporations, in English Law, are divided— 1. Into sole and aggregate. Sole corporations are such as consist of a single person who is constituted a corporation by law, for the purpose of enjoying certain advantages and incurring certain duties, transmissible to his successors. Such is the parson of a living in respect of his benefice; a bishop, in respect of the ecclesiastical rights and property of his see; the king, &c. Corporations aggregate are such as consist of more individuals than one, and are kept up by a perpetual succession of members. 2. Into ecclesiastical and lay. Parsons, bishops, deans, and chapters are instances of the former. The latter are CORPORATION CORPORATIONS, MUNICIPAL again subdivided into civil and eleemosynary. | into the hand of the king; 4. By forfeiture of Among the first are trading companies and its charter through negligence or abuse of the municipal corporations; among the latter, franchise. hospitals, colleges in the universities, and similar establishments (which, however, were anciently esteemed ecclesiastical). By the law of England, corporations are erected only with the king's consent, express or implied; and may exist by prescription, by letters patent, or by Act of Parliament. Bishops, parsons, &c., may indeed be said to exist as corporations by force of the common law; but some ancient municipal bodies, such as the corporation of London, are in a stricter sense corporations by prescription. Corporations by Act of Parliament may be created either expressly or by implication; as, where a body is to take lands by succession, this constitutes them a corporation. But the ordinary mode by which they are erected is by the king's letters patent or charter of incorporation; persons exercising the power of founding corporations by a grant of their own (as the chancellor of the university of Oxford) being for this purpose only delegates of the king. The chief incident of a corporation is the power of taking by succession. This power is, however, confined in the case of sole corporations to estates of freehold; corporations aggregate only can take goods and chattels by succession. Grants by a corporation aggregate must be by deed under their common seal, which is necessary to give validity to most of their acts. A corporation has essentially the power of making by-laws to bind its own members, which are valid so far as they are not contrary to the laws of the kingdom. Corporations ecclesiastical and eleemosynary may, moreover, be subject to rules or statutes imposed by the king or the founder; civil corporations only to the common law and their own by-laws. In aggregate corporations, the act of the majority is the act of the whole. The common law capacity of corporations to take lands has been, however, materially narrowed by statute. Thus a devise of lands to a corporation by will is bad, unless in some exceptional cases. And, in consequence of the Statutes of Mortmain [MORTMAIN], a corporation, whether lay or ecclesiastical, must now have a license from the crown in order to purchase. All corporations are said to be subject to visitation. The visitor of ecclesiastical corporations is the ordinary [ORDINARY]; the visitor of lay corporations is the founder. In eleemosynary corporations this right, therefore, is in the founder and his heirs, or in such person as he has appointed: in civil corporations, the king is visitor, and exercises that jurisdiction in the King's Bench; where alone misbehaviour of such corporations or their officers can be enquired into, chiefly by means of the processes termed MANDAMUS and QUO WARRANTO [which see]. A corporation is dissoluble-1. By Act of Parliament; 2. In the case of an aggregate corporation, by the death of all its members; 3. By surrender of its franchises VOL. I 561 Corporations, Municipal. These bodies, which have acted so important a part in the history of modern Europe, originated in the Italian and provincial towns subject to the Roman sway. In England we have no record of the internal constitution of our towns prior to the AngloSaxon settlement, and during those times our information is extremely scanty and imperfect. The magistracy in English towns appears to have been elective; that in Danish, hereditary. In Domesday Book we find in every town (eightytwo in all, in those parts of the record which remain to us) a certain number of persons mentioned as burgesses; a number sometimes equalling, sometimes falling far short of the houses enumerated. Boroughs at this period were exempt from the immediate jurisdiction of the sheriffs of the counties in which they were situate: they possessed their own hundred courts, leets, and view of frankpledge; but they were liable for various duties to the king, who was usually lord of the leet, i.e. exercised jurisdiction in the borough; and to the lord of the soil also, if there were any. It became usual after the Conquest for the king to let the fees and revenues thus due, together with the right of appointing the officers of justice, to the burgesses in general; and by this species of enfranchisement the borough became an independent municipality. But a free borough was constituted by having, in addition to those powers, exemption from the king's tolls, granted to its burgesses by royal charter. Such continued to be, in substance, the condition of English boroughs for several centuries. During all this period no one seems to have doubted the capability inherent in the burgesses of a town, as a community, to take and enjoy lands, tolls, or other hereditaments, to themselves and their successors. But about the period of the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VỈ., the increasing subtlety of our legal system, and more particularly the notions introduced by the study of the civil law, appear to have occasioned the custom of granting charte s in a new form. It appears to have been thought that the power of holding lands in succession, and the right of suing and being sued by a common name, could not in strictness be enjoyed, except by a body constituted for those very purposes by the king's grant. Hence originated charters or letters of incorporation, granted to the men or burgesses of towns jointly with the mayor, bailiff, or other chief officer; and thus municipal corporations in the strict legal sense were first constituted. But previously to this time it is probable that a great change had taken place, in most towns, in the character of the class of 'men' or burgesses' to whom these charters were granted. As the privileges of burgess-ship became more valuable, additional difficulties 00 CORPORATIONS, MUNICIPAL were thrown by the governing body in the seems to have been acquired after the first borough in the way of its acquisition. While charters of incorporation were granted, and the old household right remained in some places, previously to the Revolution. it was lost in others. In its stead, or by its side, arose the rights of freemen of a guild or trade; those of the holders of particular tenements, which alone were recognised as conferring on their occupant the title of burgess; those of freeholders in cities, counties of themselves, &c. And hence the variety of the old parliamentary franchise [PARLIAMENT], as members of parliament were elected by the burgesses. Hence the corporations, which were constituted by the charters of Henry VI. and Edward IV., were already very different bodies from the general mass of dwellers in a town. But close corporations, properly so called, were not established until the reigns of the Tudors, when the first governing charters' were granted. [BOROUGH.] By these new charters the powers of municipal government were usually vested in a mayor and common council: the latter consisting of councillors and aldermen; the former of whom were selected in various ways, by the whole of the council or the aldermen; the aldermen mostly nominated by and out of the rest of the council. In these bodies the control over the town funds, the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the town, and police authority within its limits, became vested. The freemen, as well as the commonalty, thus ceased to be members of the governing body; but the former retained the extensive pecuniary advantages which in many places belonged to them. The causes of this revolution, and of the gradual change by which the municipal bodies became more and more exclusive in their character, are chiefly to be found in the parliamentary franchise enjoyed by most of the corporate boroughs. When the House of Commons became an important body in the empire, the crown, as well as the noblemen and the powerful individuals to whose estates the boroughs were contiguous, had a strong and direct interest in controlling the nomination of members. This was much more easily effected by the agency of select bodies, such as the corporations, than by influencing the votes of an independent community. Hence, while in the larger places the corporation, usually devoted to the interest of its patron, exercised a decisive or a strong authority in controlling elections, in many smaller boroughs the elective franchise became in effect confined to the corporation itself, by means of the freemen who were closely associated with it Thus the system of close corporations, established under the Tudors, acquired continually more strength and more exclusiveness. The governing bodies in the previous reign seem also to have assumed in many places the power, which has been since so liberally exercised, of admitting to the rights of freemen, or burgesses, whom they pleased, either by free gift or purchase. The great bulk of the property of corporations, both that enjoyed by them to their own use, and that of which they were trustees for charitable purposes, In the reign of Charles II., when the corporate bodies in the larger towns had become for the most part attached to the Whig interest, and hostile to the court, they were attacked by the crown through the famous writs of quo warranto. These were writs issued out of the King's Bench to the municipal bodies, to enquire by what right they exercised their jurisdictions and enjoyed their franchises; and the object was to contest the validity of the ancient charters, or at least to terrify them into surrendering them into the king's hands, and receiving new ones from him. Many such surrenders were actually made, and new charters granted: these, however, were recalled by a proclamation of James II., and the old ones regranted or revived; and this proclamation was allowed, after the Revolution, to have the force of law. A few boroughs, however, did not accept the restoration of their charters, and remained without a corporation. From the period of the Revolution little or no change of importance took place in the constitution of the towns or their governing bodies, until the passing of the Municipal Reform Act in 1835. By this Act (5 & 6 Wm. IV. c. 76) the municipal franchise is made uniform all over the kingdom. In order to enjoy it, an individual must have occupied a house, warehouse, counting house, or shop, within the borough, for three years; and must have been rated to all poor rates in respect of such premises during the whole of such time; and must be enrolled on the burgess list, which is framed by the overseers of the parishes and revised every year by the mayor and assessors. He must also have resided within seven miles of the borough during that time. There are also provisions for the cases of successive occupancy and change of residence. These burgesses form the electoral body. They choose-1. The councillors; of whom the number is limited by the Act, according to the number of wards of which each borough consists (this number being also specified by enactment, and varying from one to sixteen). No person can be qualified as a councillor, or alderman, unless he is a burgess possessing a certain amount of property (1,000?.) or a rating at 307. per annum, in boroughs having four wards and upwards; 5007, or 15!. per annum, in boroughs not having that number. One third part of the councillors go annually out of office. 2. The council, i. e. the mayor, existing aldermen, and councillors, jointly elect every year the aldermen from among the qualified burgesses; half of whom go out of office every third year. 3. The councillors and aldermen together elect out of their own united body the mayor, whose office is annual. The mayor, aldermen, and councillors together form the council. The townclerk, treasurer, &c. are appointed by the council during pleasure. With regard to existing rights, freemen are |