BEING
A CONCISE AND COMPREHENSIVE DICTIONARY
OF GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
CONSISTING OF
OVER 16,000 TERSE AND ORIGINAL ARTICLES ON NEARLY ALL SUBJECTSDISCUSSED IN LARGER ENCYCLOPÆDIAS, AND SPECIALLY DEALINGWITH SUCH AS COME UNDER THE CATEGORIESOFHISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, GEOGRAPHY, LITERATURE,PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION,SCIENCE, AND ART
EDITED BY THE
REV. JAMES WOOD
EDITOR OF "NUTTALL'S STANDARD DICTIONARY" AND COMPILER OF THE"DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS"
THE SIXTY-FIRST THOUSAND
1907
"The NUTTALL ENCYCLOPÆDIA" is the fruit of a project to provide, in aconcise and condensed form, and at a cheap rate, an epitome of the kindof information given in the larger Encyclopædias, such as may provesufficient for the ordinary requirements, in that particular, of thegenerality of people, and especially of such as have not the means forpurchasing or the leisure for studying the larger.
An Encyclopædia is now recognised to be as indispensable a book ofreference as a dictionary; for while the latter explains and defines thevehicle of thought, the former seeks to define the subject-matter. Nowthe rapid increase in the vocabulary of a nation, which makes thepossession of an up-to-date dictionary almost one of the necessaries oflife, is evidently due to the vast increase in the number of factswhich the language has to describe or interpret; and if it is difficultto keep pace with the growth in the language, it is obviously moredifficult to attain even a working knowledge of the array of facts whichin this age come before us for discussion. No man can now peruse even adaily newspaper without being brought face to face with details aboutquestions of the deepest interest to him; and he is often unable tograsp the meaning of what he reads for want of additional knowledge orexplanation. In short, it becomes more and more a nece