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TABORITES 224 TACITUS both kinds. On the same spot they founded the city of Tabor, and, assem- bling an insurrectionary force, marched on PragTie under the lead of Ziska (July 30, 1419), and committed great atrocities under the pretence of avenging insults offered to the Calixtine custom of com- municating under both kinds. On the death of King Wenceslaus (Aug. 16, 1419) they began to destroy churches and monasteries, to persecute the clergy, and to appropriate church property on the ground that Christ was shortly to appear and establish His personal I'eign among them. They were eventually con- quered and dispersed in 1453 by George Podiebrada (afterward King of Bo- hemia). TABRIZ, or TABREEZ (the ancient Tauris), a city of Persia, capital of the province of Azerbijan, on the Aigi, 36 miles above its entrance into Lake iJrumia. It lies at the inner extremity of an amphitheater, about 4,000 feet above sea-level, with hills on three sides, and an extensive plain on the fourth. It is surrounded with a wall of sun-dried brick, with bastions, and entered by 7 or 8 gates. There are numerous mos- ques, bazaars, baths, and caravanserais. The citadel, originally a mosque, and 600 years old, was converted by Abbas Mirza into an arsenal. The blue mosque dates from the 15th century. Tabriz has man- ufactures of silks, cottons, carpets, leather and leather goods, etc. It is the great emporium for the trade of Persia on the W., and has an extensive com- merce. Exports and imports annually over $100,000,000. In the World War it was occupied first by the Turks and then by the Russians. It has frequently suf- fered from earthquakes. Pop. about 200,000. TABULATA, in zoology, a group of Madreporaria Perforata. Tabulate cor- als, having the visceral chamber divided into stories by tabulas, and with the septa rudimentary or absent. The group is of doubtful stability, some recent genera, as Millepora, Heliopora, etc., having been removed from it, and vari- ous ^ fossil genera Favosites, Chsetetes, Syringopora, Haly sites, etc., being placed in it provisionally. Families, Favositidse, Chxtetidx, Thecidas, and Halysitidx. From the Silurian onward. TACAHOUT, or TACOUT, the name of small, irregularly-rounded, tuberculate galls produced by a species of cynips on the twigs of a tamarix (probably T. articulata) ^ in Algeria and Morocco. They contain a large quantity of gallic acid, and are used in photographic prep- arations. The above-named species of tamarix, as also T. gallica and T. dioica, supply a similar gall in India — the mahi of the Punjab and sakun of Sindh; used as a mordant in dyeing and in tanning. TACAMAHAC, the name given to a bitter balsamic resin, the produce of sev- eral kinds of trees belonging to Mexico and the West Indies, the East Indies, South America, and North America. The balsam poplar or tacamahac is one of these. TACCA, a tropical genus of mono- cotyledonous herbs, some of whose spe- cies have a large tuberous root; e. g., the T. pinnatifida, a plant of the shores of the South Sea Islands. Its tubers, which resemble new potatoes, contain a large proportion of starch, and this being sep- arated by rasping and maceration, is largely used as an article of food. It bears the name of South Sea, Tahiti, and Fiji arrowroot, and Otaheiti salep, and is also esteemed as a medicinal agent in dysentery and diarrhoea. TACHINIDiE, a family of Brache- lytra, now merged in Staphylinidse; small, excessively agile beetles of convex tapering form, with pentamerous tarsi. They frequent flowers. TACITUS, the historian, is known to us chiefly from autobiographical touches in his own VTitings and from allusions in Pliny's letters. His full name is mat- ter of doubt — Cornelius Tacitus being his nomen and cognomen; but whether TACITUS his praenomen was Publius or Gaius can only be conjectured. Born perhaps in Rome (less probably in Terni), under the Emperor Claudius between a. d. 52 and 54, it is inferred that his family was respectable from his education, his pro-