Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 09.djvu/439

THBUSH 377 THUCYDIDES has several European species, but to only three of these is the name thrush ap- plied. The song thrush, throstle, or mavis (Turdtis mueious), the missel thrush (T. viscivorus), and white thrush (T. va- rins). The song thrush, common, is not quite nine inches long; back and upper surface brown of slightly different shades, chin white, abdomen and tail coverts grayish- white ; throat, breast, and flanks, together with the sides of the neck, yel- low, thickly spotted with dark-brown. It is one of the best-known European song birds, and in captivity is easily taught simple airs. It is found all over Europe, but leaves some of the N. parts in winter, being thus practically a bird of passage. It feeds on insects, worms, slugs, snails, and in the summer greedily devours cher- ries and smaller fruit. It usually builds a cup-shaped nest in a thick bush or shrub, and lines the interior with mud, clay, or dung. The eggs are four to six in number, bright bluish-green, with brownish spots. They usually produce two broods in the season. THRUSH, sometimes called Infan- tile Sore Mouth, or Diphtheria op the Mouth, essentially a disease of early in- fancy. It is very frequently met with in connection with the artificial feeding of young children, and is evidently con- nected with impaired nutrition. It may also be the result of inflammation of the mucous membrane of the mouth, or it may depend on the development of cryp- togamic vegetation on the mucous mem- brane. The symptoms are numerous small white spots on the mucous membrane of the mouth, the inner surface of the lips, and especially near the angles of the mouth, the inside of the cheeks, the tongue, and sometimes on the gums. The spots are generally of a circular form, about the size of a pin's head, and are firmly adherent. Sometimes the spots coalesce, and the mouth may be exten- sively coated with a false membrane, a condition sometimes called aphtha. THRUSH, in veterinary surgery, ■ n affection of the horse's frog, appear ii?g as a severe and acute inflammation, which usually proceeds to ulceration, and whi^h is accompanied by a fetid discharge. The best application for it is mineral tar. Calomel dressing is to be substituted for the tar in severe and intractable cases, and ulcerated and loose parts of the frog are to be carefully removed. THUCYDIDES, historian of the Pelo- ponnesian War; born in the deme Halimus most probably in 471 b. c. ; was the son of Olorus and Hegesipyle, and was re- lated to Miltiades and Cimon. An Athe- nian of good family, he must have known Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Phi- dias, Protagoras, Gorgias, and possibly Herodotus and ^schylus. He was fur- ther possessed, either by inheritance or by acquisition through marriage, of gold mines in that part of Thrace lying oppo- site the island of Thasos. We know from himself that he was one of the sufferers from the terrible plague of Athens, and also one of the few who recovered. He held military command, and he had under him an Athenian squadron of seven ships at Thasos, 424 B. c, when he failed to relieve Amphipolis, which fell into the hands of Brasidas. Condemned to death as a traitor, he took refuge in exile and retired to his Thracian estates. His exile enabled him to associate with Pelopon- nesians quite as much as with the Athe- nians; and he probably spent some time also in Sicily. According to his own ac- count, he lived in exile 20 years, and probably returned to Athens after the destruction of its walls, in 404. How or when he died is unknown. But he did not live long enough to revise book viii. or to bring his history down to the end of the war. If Herodotus was "the father of his- tory," Thucydides was the first of critical historians, and no better account of his methods can be given than is contained in his own words: "Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to any notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I either saw myself or learned from others, of whom I made the most careful and particular inquiry. The task was a laborious one, because eye witnesses of the same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they re- membered or were interested in the ac- tions of one side or the other." There is hardly a literary production of which posterity has entertained a more uni- formly favorable estimate than the his- tory of Thucydides. This high distinc- tion he owes to his undeviating fidelity and impartiality as a narrator; to the masterly concentration of his work, in which he is content to give in a few sim- ple yet vivid expressions the facts which it must have often taken him weeks or even months to collect, sift, and decide upon; to the sagacity of his political and moral ob' arvations, in which he shows the keenes'l insight into the springs of human action and the mental nature of man; and to the unrivaled descriptive power exemplified in his account of the plague of Athens, and of the Athenian expedi- tion to Sicily. Often, indeed, does the modern student of Greek history share the wish of Grote, that the great writer