le système nerveux, l’embryogénie, les organs des sens, et la
circulation des annélides” (Ibid., 1844–50); “Sur les affinités et
les analogies des lombrics et des sangsues” (Ibid.); “Sur
l’histoire naturelle des tarets” (Ibid., 1848-49). Then there is
the vast series issued under the general title of “Études sur les
types inférieurs de l’embranchement des annelés," and the results
of several scientific expeditions to the Atlantic and Mediterranean
coast lands, Italy and Sicily, forming a series of articles in the
Revue des deux mondes, or embodied in the Souvenirs d’un naturaliste
(2 vols., 1854). These were followed in quick succession by
the Physiologie comparée, metamorphoses de l’homme et des animaux
(1862); Les Polynésiens et leurs migrations (1866); Histoire
naturelle des annelés marins et de l’eau douce (2 vols., 1866); La
Rochelle et ses environs (1866); Rapport sur les progrès de l’anthropologie
(1867); Ch. Darwin et ses précurseurs français (1870), a
study of evolution in which the writer takes somewhat the same
attitude as A. R. Wallace, combating the Darwinian doctrine in
its application to man; La Race prussienne (1871); Crania Ethnica,
jointly with Dr Hamy (2 vols., with 100 plates, 1875–82), a classical
work based on French and foreign anthropological data, analogous
to the Crania Britannica of Thurnam and Davis, and to S. G. Morton’s
Crania Americana and Crania Aegyptiaca; L’Espèce humaine
(1877); Nouvelles Études sur la distribution géographique des
négritos (1882); Hommes fossiles et hommes sauvages (1884);
and Histoire générale des races humaines (2 vols., 1886–89), the first
volume being introductory, while the second attempts a complete
classification of mankind.
QUATREFOIL, in Gothic architecture, the piercing of tracery in a window or balustrade with small semicircular openings known as “foils”; the intersection of these foils is termed the cusp.
QUATREMERE, ETIENNE MARC (1782–1857), French
Orientalist, the son of a Parisian merchant, was born in Paris on the 12th of July 1782. Employed in 1807 in the manuscript department of the imperial library, he passed to the chair of Greek in Rouen in 1809, entered the Academy of Inscriptions in 1815, taught Hebrew and Aramaic in the College de France from 1819, and finally in 1827 became professor of Persian in the School of Living Oriental Languages.
Quatremere’s first work was Recherches . . . sur la langue et la littérature de l’Egypte (1808), showing that the language of ancient Egypt must be sought in Coptic. His translation of Makrizi’s Arabic history of the Mameluke sultans (2 vols., 1837–41) shows his erudition at the best. He published among other works Mémoires sur les Nabaléens (1835); a translation of Rashid al-Din’s Hist. des Mongols de la Perse (1836); Mém. géog. et hist. sur l’Egypte (1810); the text of Ibn Khaldun’s Prolegomena; and a vast number of useful memoirs in the Journal asiatique. His numerous reviews in the Journal des savants should also be mentioned. Quatremere made great lexicographic collections in Oriental languages, fragments of which appear in the notes to his various works. His MS. material for Syriac has been utilized in Payne Smith’s Thesaurus; of the slips he collected for a projected Arabic, Persian and Turkish lexicon some account is given in the preface to Dozy, Supp. aux dictt. arabes. They are now in the Munich library.
A biographical notice by M. Barthélemy Sainte-Hilaire is prefixed to Quatremére’s Mélanges d’histoire et de philologie orientale (1861).
QUAY, MATTHEW STANLEY (1833–1904), American political “boss,” was born in Dillsburg, York county, Pennsylvania,
on the 30th of September 1833. He graduated at
Jefferson College (now Washington and Jefferson College) in
1850 and was admitted to the bar in 1854. He served in
various capacities in the Civil War, and in 1865–1867 was a
member of the state House of Representatives, becoming
secretary of the commonwealth in 1873–1878 and again in
1879–1882, recorder of Philadelphia in 1878–1879, and state
treasurer in 1886–1887. He was chairman of the Republican
national executive campaign committee in 1888, and was a
member of the United States Senate in 1887–1899 and again
in 1901–1904. For nearly twenty years he dominated the
government of Pennsylvania, and also played a very prominent
part in national aiiairs. In 1899 he was brought to trial on a
charge of misappropriating state funds, and, although he was
acquitted, the feeling among the reform element in his own
party was so bitter against him that the legislature was deadlocked
and his re-election was postponed for two years. He
died on the 28th of May 1904.
QUAY, a wharf or landing-place for the loading and unloading
of water-borne cargo. The word, now pronounced like “key,”
takes the form of Fr. quai, older cay or caye, cf. Spanish cayo,
a bar, barrier or reef. The earlier form in English is “kay,”
and it was so pronounced. “Key” was also earlier pronounced
“kay,” and the change in pronunciation in the one
was followed also in the other. In spelling also the word was
assimilated to “key,” in the sense of a reef, or, especially, of
the low range of reefs or islets on the coasts of Spanish America,
e.g. on the coast of Florida, the chain of islets known as Florida
Keys.
QUEBEC, a province of the Dominion of Canada, bounded S. by New Brunswick and the United States, W. by Ontario, N. by
the district of Ungava, and E. by the gulf of St Lawrence and
the strip of eastern Labrador which belongs to Newfoundland.
If Ungava be considered as added to the province of Quebec,
Hudson Strait is the northern boundary. The province includes
the island of Anticosti, the Bird Islands and the Magdalen
Islands, in the gulf of St Lawrence. The western boundary,
separating Quebec from Ontario, extends through Point au
Baudet on the river St Lawrence to Point Fortune on the
Ottawa river, from which place the boundary follows the
Ottawa to Lake Temiscaming. From the north end of this
latter lake it runs due north to Hudson Bay. The province of
Quebec thus extends from Blanc Sablon, a fishing harbour at the
western end of the Strait of Belle Isle (which separates Canada
from Newfoundland) in 59° 7′ W. to Lake Temiscaming in
79° 40′ W., a distance of about 1350 miles. The area of the
province is 351,873 sq. m. The general direction of the province
is north-east and south-west, following the course of its chief
physical feature, the river St Lawrence. Speaking generally,
it may be said that the province of Quebec comprises the hydrographical
basin of the river St Lawrence as far west as the
intersection of the parallel of 45° N. with the latter. The St
Lawrence flows near the southern edge of its basin, only some
50,000 sq. m. of the area of the province lying south of the river.
The province of Quebec falls into three main physio graphical
divisions, viz.: (1) the Laurentian Highlands, (2) the Valley
of the St Lawrence, and (3) the Notre Dame Mountains and
the rolling country lying to the south-east of this range.
(1) The Laurentian Highlands are sometimes referred to as the “Laurentian Mountains,” as they appear to constitute a mountain range when viewed from the gulf or the river St Lawrence. This portion of the province, however, is really a plateau having an elevation of 1000 to 2000 ft. above sea level, but this plateau north of latitude 55° falls away to lower levels toward Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. Along the extreme eastern border of these Laurentian Highlands on the coast of Labrador, however, the country rises to much greater altitudes, forming an extremely rugged district which attains in places an elevation of 6000 ft. above sea-level. This plateau forms what is known as the Laurentian peneplain and is hummocky in character, the surface, however, being but slightly accentuated and the sky line seen from the higher points in the area bein nearly level. It is densely wooded and everywhere abounds in lalces, great and small, lying either in basins etched in the rock surface by glacial action or else bounded by the irregularly distributed drift which more or less completely covers the surface of the underlying rocks. From these lakes issue very numerous streams tributary to the larger rivers. These lakes and rivers form so continuous a series of waterways that a traveller who knows their courses, and the portages connecting them, can traverse this immense tract of country in any direction by canoe. These streams also, cascading down from the elevated surface of the plateau to sea-level, afford immense water power, which is used to an increasing extent as the methods of long-distance electrical transmission of power become more and more perfect. These waters are, moreover, clear and pure, and the country is one in which malaria and similar diseases are unknown. Some of the rivers draining the Laurentian country run in very deep, high walled valleys or fjords cut in the solid rock; a number of which, comparable in character although perhaps not in depth to those of Norway and Greenland, pass outward from the central portion of the peneplain north, east and south. As an example of such fjords in the province of Quebec, those occupied by the waters of the Hamilton, Mingan and Saguenay rivers may be cited as well as that, now partially silted up, which is occupied by Lake Temiscaming and the Mattawa river. The walls of solid gneiss between which the Saguenay Hows are in places from 1500 to 1800 ft. in height, while the waters of the river in places reach a depth of 1400 ft.
This Laurentian country in the province of Quebec and its continuation into the adjacent province contain the chief timber
