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CORNU—CORNWALL
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October, and again in March, if required in the latter part of the spring. The sorts principally grown are the Round-leaved and the Italian; the last is a distinct species, Valerianella eriocarpa.


CORNU, MARIE ALFRED (1841–1902), French physicist, was born at Orleans on the 6th of March 1841, and after being educated at the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines, became in 1867 professor of experimental physics in the former institution, where he remained throughout his life. Although he made various excursions into other branches of physical science, undertaking, for example, with J. B. A. Baille about 1870 a repetition of Cavendish’s experiment for determining the mean density of the earth, his original work was mainly concerned with optics and spectroscopy. In particular he carried out a classical redetermination of the velocity of light by A. H. L. Fizeau’s method, introducing various improvements in the apparatus, which added greatly to the accuracy of the results. This achievement won for him, in 1878, the prix Lacaze and membership of the Academy of Sciences in France, and the Rumford medal of the Royal Society in England. In 1899, at the jubilee commemoration of Sir George Stokes, he was Rede lecturer at Cambridge, his subject being the undulatory theory of light and its influence on modern physics; and on that occasion the honorary degree of D.Sc. was conferred on him by the university. He died at Paris on the 11th of April 1902.


CORNU COPIAE, later Cornucopia (“horn of plenty”), a horn; generally twisted, filled with fruit and flowers, or an ornament representing it. It was used as a symbol of prosperity and abundance, and hence in works of art it is placed in the hands of Plutus, Fortuna and similar divinities (for the mythological account see Amaltheia). The symbol probably originated in the practice of using the horns of oxen and goats as drinking-cups; hence the rhyton (drinking-horn) is often confounded with the cornu copiae. For its representation in works of art, in which it is very common, especially in those belonging to the Roman period, see article in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des Antiquités.


CORNUS, an ancient town of Sardinia, of Phoenician origin, on the west coast, 18 m. from Tharros, and the same from Bosa. At the time of the Second Punic War it is spoken of as the principal city of the district, and its capture by the Romans was the last act in the suppression of the rebellion of 215 B.C., it having served as a place of refuge for the fugitives after the defeat of the combined forces of the rebels and the Carthaginians. The site of the ancient acropolis, covered with débris, may still be made out. Here were found three inscriptions in 1831, with dedications by the ordo, or town council, of Cornus to various patrons, from one of which it seems that it was a colony, though when it became so is unknown (Th. Mommsen, Corp. Inscr. Lat. x. 7915 sqq.). Unimportant remains of an aqueduct and (perhaps) of a church exist. Excavations in the necropolis of the Roman period are recorded by F. Nissardi, Notizie degli Scavi, 1887, p. 47. Phoenician rock-cut tombs may also be seen.


CORNUTUS, LUCIUS ANNAEUS, Stoic philosopher, flourished in the reign of Nero. He was a native of Leptis in Libya, but resided for the most part in Rome. He is best known as the teacher and friend of Persius, whose satires he revised for publication after the poet’s death, but handed them over to Caesius Bassus to edit, at the special request of the latter. He was banished by Nero (in 66 or 68) for having indirectly disparaged the emperor’s projected history of the Romans in heroic verse (Dio Cassius lxii. 29), after which time nothing more is heard of him. He was the author of various rhetorical works in both Greek and Latin (Ῥητορικαὶ Τέχναι, De figuris sententiarum). Another rhetorician, also named Cornutus, who flourished A.D. 200–250 (or in the second half of the 2nd century) was the author of a treatise Τέχνη τοῦ πολιτικοῦ λόγου (ed. J. Graeven, 1890). A philosophical treatise, Theologiae Graecae compendium (of which the Greek title is uncertain; perhaps, Ἑλληνικὴ θεολογία, or Περὶ τῆς τῶν θεῶν φύσεως, though the latter may be the title of an abridgment of the former) is still extant. It is a manual of “popular mythology as expounded in the etymological and symbolical interpretations of the Stoics” (Sandys), and although marred by many absurd etymologies, abounds in beautiful thoughts (ed. C. Lang, 1881). Simplicius and Porphyry refer to his commentary on the Categories of Aristotle, whose philosophy he is said to have defended against an opponent Athenodorus in a treatise Ἀντιγραφὴπρὸς Άθηνόδωρον. His Aristotelian studies were probably his most important work. A commentary on Virgil (frequently quoted by Servius) and Scholia to Persius are also attributed to him; the latter, however, are of much later date, and are assigned by Jahn to the Carolingian period. Excerpts from his treatise De enuntiatione vel orthographia are preserved in Cassiodorus. The so-called Disticha Cornuti (ed. Liebl, Straubing, 1888) belong to the late middle ages.

See G. Martini, De L. Annaeo Cornuto (1825); O. Jahn, Prolegomena to his edition of Persius; H. von Arnim in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, i. pt. ii. (1894); M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, i. 2 (1901), p. 285; W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898), pp. 702, 755; Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans.), § 299, 2.


CORNWALL, the capital of the united counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, Ontario, Canada, 67 m. S.W. of Montreal, on the left bank of the St Lawrence river. Pop. (1901) 6704. It is an important station on the Grand Trunk and the Ottawa & New York railways, and is a port of call for all steamers between Montreal and Lake Ontario ports. The surplus from the Cornwall canal furnishes excellent water privileges for its factories, which include cotton and woollen mills and grist and saw mills. The town has long been celebrated for its lacrosse club. On the opposite bank of the river is St Régis, inhabited chiefly by Indians of the Iroquois tribe.


CORNWALL, the south-westernmost county of England, bounded N. and N.W. by the Atlantic Ocean, E. by Devonshire, and S. and S.W. by the English Channel. The area is 1356.6 sq. m. The most southerly extension is Lizard Point, and the most westerly point of the mainland Land’s End, but the county also includes the Scilly Isles (q.v.), lying 25 m. W. by S. of Land’s End. No county in England has a stronger individuality than Cornwall, whether in economic or social conditions, in history, nomenclature, tradition, or even in the physical characteristics of the land. Such individuality is hardly to be compassed within political boundaries, and in some respects it is shared by the neighbouring county of Devon, yet the traveller hardly feels its influence before passing west of the Tamar.

Physically, Cornwall is a great promontory with a direct length of 75 m. from N.N.E. to S.S.W., and an extreme breadth, at the junction with Devonshire, of 45 m. The river Tamar here forms the greater part of the boundary, and its valley divides the high moors of Devonshire and the succession of similar broad-topped hills which form the backbone of the Cornish promontory. The scenery is full of contrast. To the west of Launceston the principal mass of high land rises to 1375 ft. in Brown Willy, the highest point in the county. This district is broken and picturesque, with rough tors or hills and boulders. A remarkable pile of rocks called the Cheese-wring, somewhat resembling an inverted pyramid in form, is seen on the moor north of Liskeard. This district is for the most part a region of furze and heather; but after passing Bodmin, the true Cornish moorland asserts itself, bare, desolate and impracticable, broken and dug into hillocks, which are sometimes due to early mining works, sometimes to more modern search for metals. The seventy miles from Launceston to Mount’s Bay have been called not untruly “the dreariest strip of earth traversed by any English high road.” There is hardly more cultivation on the higher ground west of Mount’s Bay, or in the Meneage or “rocky country,” the old Cornish name for the promontory which ends in the Lizard. Long combes and valleys, however, descend from this upper moorland towards the coast on both sides. These are in general well wooded, and, in the luxuriance of their vegetation, strongly characteristic. The small rivers traversing them in several cases enter fine estuaries, which ramify deeply into the land. Such are, on the south coast, the great estuary of the Tamar, and other streams, on which the port of Plymouth is situated (but only the western shore is Cornish), the Looe and Fowey rivers, Falmouth Harbour, the most important of the purely Cornish inlets and accessible for the largest vessels, and