Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 09.djvu/562

TREBIZOND 492 TBEE TOAD dens, has a striking appearance. There are 18 mosques, 15 Christian churches, and many elegant baths and spacious bazaars. The industries, chiefly weaving and dyeing, are unimportant; but the products of the surrounding country, which form part of the exports of Treb- izond, comprise considerable quantities of boxwood, loupes or walnut-tree knobs, valued in France for veneers, beans, wheat and Indian corn, fruits and pro- visions, nuts and walnuts, skins, wool, tiftick and fillick, and tobacco. Trebi- zond is an emporium for the Persian trade, but has suffered greatly from the opening of the railway from Tiflis to Poti, and the diversion of trade to Ba- toum. It is a terminus for caravans from Erzerum, Armenia, Kurdistan, Tabriz, etc., and has regular communica- tion by steam line with Constantinople, the Danube, and French ports. The har- bor is only an open roadstead, and dur- ing the autumn equinoxes vessels have to shelter either at Batoum or at Platina, 6 miles W, Besides the opening of the Poti railway, the want of good roads in the interior, the neglect of the larger crown forests, and the imposition of heavy custom dues, have checked Treb- izond's prosperity. Trebizond, founded by a colony from Sinope, 756 B. C, was a great trading town in Xenophon's time, and continued to flourish as an emporium for the Indian trade under the Roman empire. Its period of greatest prosperity as capital of the Comnenian empire of Trebizond began in 1204 and lasted till 1461, when David, last of the Comnenes, was captured by Mohammed II. Since then Trebizond has belonged to the Porte. Pop. about 55,000. The city was captured by the Russians in 1916, but disorganization had already begrun in the army and they made only a weak attempt to hold it. TBEBLE, in music, of or pertaining to the highest vocal or instrumental part, sung by boys, or played by violins, oboes, clarinets, or other instruments of acute tone. TREE, in botany, any woody plant rising from the ground, with a trunk, and perennial in duration; an arborescent plant as distinguished from a shrub, an under-shrub, and an herb. The classifi- cation of plants which at first suggests itself as the most natural one is into trees, shrubs, and herbs. This is still the popular classification as it was that of the oldest observers (I Kings iv: 33); but it violates all natural affinities, and has long since been abandoned by bota- nists. Trees occur in many orders, their stems varying in structure according to the sub-kingdoms to which they belongs They may be exogenous, or of that modi^ fication of the exogenous stem which exists in gymnogens, or may be endo- genous or acrogenous. The age of cer- tain trees, especially of exogens, is often great, and, when cut down, the number of years they have existed can be ascer- tained by counting the annual zones. Some of the giant cedars of California are more than 100 feet in circumference, 400 feet high, and certainly 3,000 years old. Von Martius describes the trunks of certain locust trees in Brazil as being 84 feet in circumference and 60 feet where the boles become cylindrical. From counting the annual rings of one, he formed the opinion that it was of about the age of Homer; another estimate in- creased the age to 4,104 years, but a third one made the tree first grow up 2,052 years from the publication of Mar- tius' book (1820). A baobab tree {Adan- sonia digitata) in Senegal was computed by Adanson, A. D. 1794, to be 5,150 years old; but he made his calculations from the measurement of only a fragment of the cross section, and, as zones differ much in breadth, this method of compu- tation involves considerable risk of error. Sir Joseph Hooker rejects the conclusion. Most trees are deciduous, i. e., have deciduous leaves, a few are evergreen. To the latter kind belong those conifer- ous trees which form so conspicuous a feature in the higher temperate lati- tudes, while deciduous trees prevail in lower latitudes. The planting of trees is now more attended to than formerly, especially in cities and on the prairie lands of the United States. See Fores- try. TREE EROGr, in zoology, any individ- ual of the family Hylidse. They are of small size, more elegant in form than the true frogs, of brighter colors, and more active habits. They feed on insects, which they pursue on the branches of shrubs and trees. The European tree frog (Hyla arborea) is common in the middle and S. of the Continent, and ranges into Asia and the N. of Africa. It becomes very noisy on the approach of rain, and is often kept in confinement as a kind of barometer. The common tree frog of North America is Hyla versicolor, re- placed in the S. by the green tree frog, H. viridis. TREE TOAD, in zodlogy, a popular name for several of the Hylidm. Used without a qualifying epithet, it is equiva- lent to tree frog. With a qualifying epithet, it is limited to particular species. Hyla versi-color is the changeable tree toad, Trachycephalus lichenatus is the