devoted himself to literary pursuits. True to his republican principles, he voted, July 10, 1802, against the law appointing Bonaparte consul for life. He wrote Histoire des animaux d'Aristote (1783), Voyage dans les départements nouvellement réunis (1803), and several legal works.
CAMUS, Charles Étienne Louis, a French mathematician and mechanician, born at Crécy-en-Brie, Aug. 25, 1699, died in Paris in 1768. He was a professor of geometry and examiner in the schools of engineering and artillery in Paris. In 1736 he accompanied Maupertuis and Clairaut in their expedition to Lapland to measure a degree of the meridian there, and was afterward employed in the same work between Paris and Amiens. His papers in the memoirs of the academy are generally on mechanical subjects, and are of great value. He also published a Cours de mathématiques (4 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1749), and Opérations faites pour mesurer le degré de méridienne entre Paris et Amiens (8vo, 1757). In 1760 he became perpetual secretary of the academy of architecture.
CAMWOOD, a red dyewood, principally imported from the vicinity of Sierra Leone, obtained from a leguminous tree, called by De Candolle baphia nitida. The coloring matter is with difficulty imparted to water, cold or boiling. Alcohol and alkaline solutions readily extract it. It is usually kept in the ground state.
Camwood (Baphia nitida).
CANA, the name of two ancient towns in Palestine, one, now Kana el-Jelil, about 8 m. N., the other, Kefr Kenna, about 3 m. N. E., of Nazareth. It is uncertain which of these, if either, is the scene of the first miracle of Jesus, as recorded in the New Testament. Dr. Robinson gives the preference to the first mentioned Cana. Stanley, in his “Sinai and Palestine,” thinks the claims of the two about equally divided.
CANAAN (Heb. Kena’an, probably lowland, from kana’ to incline), that part of the promised land which lay between the Mediterranean on the W., the Jordan on the E., the desert of Shur on the S., and Syria on the N., and was originally inhabited by descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham. (See Palestine.)
CANADA, Dominion of, a semi-independent federation of British provinces, occupying the northern part of North America, bounded N. by the Arctic ocean, E. by the Atlantic, S. by the United States, and W. by the Pacific ocean and Alaska. Its southernmost part is in lat. 41° 45′ N., and it lies between the meridians of 52° and 141° W. The superficial area is greater than that of the United States, and is nearly equal to the whole of Europe. It comprises the following provinces and territories: Ontario, 121,260 sq. m.; Quebec, 210,020; Nova Scotia, 18,670; New Brunswick, 27,037; British Columbia, 233,000; Manitoba, 16,000; Hudson Bay and Northwest territories, 2,206,725, exclusive of Labrador and the islands in the Arctic ocean. These being added, the total area is about 3,500,000 sq. m.
Seal of Canada.
Of this amount more than half is the property of the general government, acquired by purchase from the Hudson Bay company. The portion which is useless for cultivation from being subject to summer drought is 50,000 sq. m.; the prairie lands, with occasional scattered groves and belts of timber on the margin of rivers, well adapted for agriculture, cover 120,000 sq. m.; the timbered lands, in which occasional prairies are interspersed, as in the Peace river district, and which are suitable for the growth of wheat and other grains, cover 466,225 sq. m. There is a belt of land, comprising 928,200 sq. m., lying outside the prairie and timbered portions, which, though beyond the agricultural zone properly speaking, is sufficiently supplied with timber, and may be utilized for the growth of barley and grass. Rock and swamp, in which the timber of the more southern regions gradually disappear, occupy 642,300 sq. m. In other terms, we may set down 375,184,000 acres of agricultural land, yet to be brought under cultivation, outside the limits of the organized provinces, the greater
