8000. The people are Greek Christians, and do not differ in appearance from the inhabitants of the other Greek islands. The villages are mostly situated at some distance from the sea; for the island suffered from pirates. Even in the early part of the 19th century sentinels stood on duty night and day, and at a signal of alarm the whole population, including the Turkish aga himself, used to hide in the woods.
For a description of the island and its remains of antiquity, see A. Conze, Reise auf den Inseln des thrakischen Meeres (Hanover, 1860); for inscriptions see Inscr. Gr. xii. 8; the island is fully described by J. H. Baker-Penoyre in Journal Hell. Stud. xxix. (1909).
THATCH (O.E. thaee; the word is common to many Teutonic
languages in the sense of “roof,” “cover”; cf. Du. dak, Ger.
Dach; from Du. dekken comes “deck”; the Indo-European
root is stag, whence Gr. στέγος, roof, Lat. tegere, to cover; the French equivalent is chaume), the material employed sometimes
for roofs in the place of tiles or slates; it consists of wheat straw,
of which several layers are required, to the depth of from 12 to
14 in., or even extending to 18 in. Unthreshed straw is said
to last from twenty-five to thirty years, and is easily repaired.
In Norfolk the reeds of marshland are employed, and they constitute
a durable thatch lasting from thirty to forty years or more. Thatched roofs are not now allowed in London or other towns and their vicinity, but if saturated with a solution of lime the thatch is said to be incombustible. It forms an extremely good roof, warm in winter and cool in summer.
THATÔN, a town and district in the Tenasserim division of
Lower Burma. The town is situated below a hill range, 10 m. from the sea. It was formerly the capital of the Talaing
kingdom and a sea-port. Pop. (1901) 14,342. The district has
an area of 5079 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 343,510, showing an increase
of 29 per cent. in the decade. It was formerly a subdivision
of Amherst district, but was formed in 1895 out of
part of that and of Shwegyin district, which has now ceased to
exist. The staple crop is rice, but a good deal of tobacco also
is grown. The railway from Pegu to Martaban, recently opened,
passes through this district and is calculated to increase its
prosperity and population.
THAXTER, CELIA (1836–1894), American poet, was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 29th of June 1836. Her father, Thomas B. Laighton, became offended with some of his associates in state politics, and retired about 1841 to the barren
and isolated Isles of Shoals, ten miles off Portsmouth, where for
about ten years he was keeper of the White Island lighthouse; and his daughter’s girlhood was therefore spent in marine surroundings, which coloured the best of the verse she afterwards wrote. Her poems, mainly in lyrical form, deal with the beacon-light, the sea-storm, the glint of sails, the sandpiper, the flower among the rocks, &c., in characteristic and sympathetic fidelity. She also wrote prose sketches of life and scenery, Among the Isles of Shoals (1873); stories and poems for children, and letters; besides a book about floriculture,
An Island Garden (1894). In 1896 appeared a complete edition of her poems, edited by Sarah Orne Jewett. She married in 1851 Levi L. Thaxter (d. 1884), a devoted student of Robert Browning’s poetry, and spent most of her life on Appledore, one of the Isles of Shoals, where she died on the 26th of August 1894. Her son Roland Thaxter (b. 1858), a well-known cryptogamic botanist, became professor of botany at Harvard in 1891.
THAYER, ABBOTT HANDERSON (1849– ), American artist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, on the 12th of August 1849. He was a pupil of J. L. Gérôme at the École des Beaux Arts, Paris, and became a member of the Society of American Artists (1879), of the National Academy of Design (1901), and of the Royal Academy of San Luca, Rome. As a painter of portraits, landscapes, animals and the ideal figure, he won high rank among American artists. Among his best-known pictures are, “Virgin Enthroned,” “Caritas,” “In Memoriam, Robert Louis Stevenson,” and “Portrait of a Young Woman”; and he did some decorative work for the Walker Art Building, Bowdoin College, Maine. Thayer is also well known as a naturalist. He developed a theory of “protective
coloration” in animals (see Colours of Animals), which has attracted considerable attention among naturalists. According to this theory, “animals are painted by nature darkest on those parts which tend to be most lighted by the sky’s light, and vice versa”; and the earth-brown of the upper parts bathed in sky-light, equals the skylight colour of the belly, bathed in earth-yellow and shadow.
See his article, “The Law which underlies Protective Coloration,” in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1897 (Washington, 1898); and Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (New York, 1910), a summary of his discoveries, by his son, Gerald H. Thayer.
THAYER, JAMES BRADLEY (1831–1902), American legal
writer and educationist, was born at Haverhill, Massachusetts,
on the 15th of January 1831. He graduated at Harvard College
in 1852, and at the Harvard Law School in 1856, in which year
he was admitted to the bar of Suffolk county and began to
practise in Boston. In 1873–83 he was Royall professor of
law at Harvard; in 1883 he was transferred to the professorship which after 1893 was known as the Weld professorship
and which he held until his death on the 14th of February 1902.
He took an especial interest in the historical evolution of law.
He wrote: The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law (1893); Cases on Evidence (1892); Cases on Constitutional Law (1895); The Development of Trial by Jury (1896); A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law (1898), and a short life of John Marshall (1901); and edited the twelfth edition of Kent’s Commentaries and the Letters of Chauncey Wright (1877), and A Westward Journey with Mr Emerson (1884).
THAYER, JOSEPH HENRY (1828–1901), American biblical scholar, was born at Boston on the 7th of November 1828. He studied at the Boston Latin School, and graduated at Harvard in 1850. Subsequently he studied theology at the Harvard Divinity School, and graduated at Andover Theological Seminary in 1857. He preached in Quincy, and in 1859–64 in Salem, Massachusetts, and in 1862–63 was chaplain of the 40th Massachusetts Volunteers. He was professor of sacred literature in Andover Seminary in 1864–82, and in 1884 succeeded Ezra Abbot as Bussey professor of New Testament criticism in the Harvard Divinity School. He died on the 26th of November 1901, soon after his resignation from the Bussey professorship. He was a member of the American Bible Revision Committee and recording secretary of the New Testament company. His
chief works were his translation of Grimm’s Clovis Novi Testamenti (1887, revised 1889) as A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, and his New Testament bibliography (1890).
THAYETMYO, a town and district in the Minbu division of Upper Burma. The town is situated on the right bank of the Irrawaddy, opposite Allanmyo. Pop. (1901) 15,824. The cantonment contains the wing of a British battalion and a native regiment. It enjoys a high reputation for healthiness. There is a special industry of silver work.
The district has an area of 4750 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 239,706, showing a decrease of 4 per cent, in the decade. The total rainfall in 1905 was 41.30 in. On the west is the Arakan Yoma range, and on the east the Pegu Yomas; and the face of the country, where it does not rise into mountains, is everywhere broken by low ranges of hills, many of which are barren and destitute of all vegetation. The greater part of the district is wooded, and the Yomas east and west are covered with forests, now mostly preserved. The chief river is the Irrawaddy, which traverses Thayetmyo from north to south. The drainage finds its way to the Irrawaddy by three main streams (the Pwon, Ma-htún and Ma-de) on the west, and by two (the Kye-ni and Hput) on the east. Several salt and hot springs occur in many localities; petroleum is also found, and extensive lime quarries exist a few miles south of Thayetmyo. The principal wild animals are elephants, rhinoceros, tigers, leopards, black bears and wild hog. Silver pheasants and partridges are found in large numbers, especially in the mountains. The chief products are ricej cotton, oil-seeds and tobacco; cutch is also very abundant, and the manufacture of the dye-stuff is carried on extensively. Coal has been found in the district, and earth
