machinery 01 enumeration remained until 1850 the same
as in 1790.In 1810 the agents of the census were placed under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury as to the enumera tion of manufactures required; but in 1820 the entire charge remained with the Secretary of State. In 1850, the supervision of the census was committed to the newly created Department of the Interior, and the period allowed for enumeration was restricted to five months. As a matter of fact, no enumeration has been completed within that time. The United States marshals and their assistants remained the agents of the census office; andasuperintendent of census was appointed. In preparation for the census of 1870, a committee of the House of Representatives, under the chairmanship of General James A. Garfield of Ohio, presented a bill which sought to bring the census as nearly up to the demands of modern statistical science as the peculiar conditions of settlement and occupation in the United States would allow. The report of the committee dwelt strongly on the essential viciousness of a protracted j enumeration, and on the general unfitness of the marshals of the courts to perform the duty. The bill, however, did not propose a single-day enumeration, but allowed a month for its completion. The schedules of inquiries were largely increased in recognition of the impossibility of obtaining statistical information under authority of the United States Government, except under cover of the constitutional provision for a decennial census. The rauk and power of the superintendent of census were increased.
The bill of the committee was carried through the House of Representatives by large majorities, but failed in the Senate. The census of 1870 was consequently taken under the Act of 1850 with two or three inconsiderable amendments.
The cost of each census has been as follows:—
A table should appear at this position in the text. See Help:Table for formatting instructions. |
Dollars. 1790 44,377 1800 66,609 1810 178,445 1820 208,526 1S30 378,543 Dollars. 18-in 833,371 1850 1,318,028 1860 1,917,540 1870 3,360,884
In the census of 1870 the work of enumeration was performed by 6572 assistant marshals, supervised by 61 marshals of United States courts.
Prior schedules so called, that is, schedules to be left at the residence in advance of the enumeration, to be filled up by the head of the family, have never been used in a census of the United States, though adopted in nearly every European country.
(f. a. w.)
CENTAURS (KeVrawpoi), in Greek mythology, were beings part horse part man, i.e., a horse had its neck and head replaced by the bead and body of a man down to the waist. The oldest form was that of a man alto gether in front with the body and hind legs of a horse attached to his back. In peopling solitary and wild places with imaginary beings it was usual to assign to these beings a bodily form in some obvious way consistent with the features of the locality; thus, Pan, the spirit of rocky hills, was imagined as having goat s legs, and Scylla, the spirit of sea-storms, as having the body and tail of a fish. lu most cases the animal adjunct was made to supersede the human legs, as if the first consideration had been that the spirit should have a non-human means of locomotion. In the case of the Centaurs whose home was in mountainous and wooded regions with wild torrents, chiefly in Thessaly and Arcadia, the horse may have been chosen either as symbolic of the impetuosity of streams and winds, or from the circumstance of such districts being favourable for horse rearing. One of the Centaurs, Chiron, who lived in a cave on Mount Pelion, was a friend of gods and heroes, skilled in medicine and music, and as an instructor of youth ; but as a race they were best known for their battle with the Lapithae, which arose at the marriage of Peiri- thous and Deidamia, when the Centaurs, excited with wine, attempted to carry off the bride, but were over powered by the help of Theseus, who was present ; hence this subject, generally suitable for sculpture, was a favourite with Athenian artists. The Centaurs formed part of tha retinue of Bacchus. No satisfactory derivation of the name has yet been given.
CENTIPEDES and MILLEPEDES, the popular names of the two orders of Articulate animals which until lately formed the entire class Myriupoda. They were formerly classed with insects, which they resemble in their jointed limbs and antennae, and in their respiratory system, but they have also points of contact with annelid worms, with crustaceans, and with spiders, by which they are marked as a transition group, intermediate between the lower and higher Articulata. Myriapods (/j.vpid<;, ten thousand, and TTOU S, a foot) are elongated worm-like creatures, cylindrical or flattened, and composed of numerous segments, each bearing one or two pairs of jointed legs, those on the anterior segments being modified, as in the Crustacea, so as to form the organs of the mouth. The fang-like, prehensile jaws of the centipede, perforated at their extremities to allow of the passage of the liquid venom into the wound they have inflicted, are thus simply modifications of a pair of legs. The eyes consist of a number of ocelli, congregated together on the head, and, with a single exception, are never compound, as in insects. Like the latter, they breathe by means of tracheal tubes, opening by stigmata placed on both sides, behind the insertion of the legs, and kept permanently open by a spiral chitinous fibre. They are unisexual, the organs of generation being, however, dif ferently placed in the two groups, occurring anteriorly in millepedes, and posteriorly in centipedes. The young of many species closely resemble their parents from the time they leave the egg, only with fewer limbs and segments ; these, however, increase with each successive moulting until the normal number of the adult is reached. Other species, as those of the family Julidce, undergo, during their period of growth, modifications closely resembling the metamorphoses of insects. Their larvte at first either are destitute of legs, or have only three pairs situated anteriorly ; and it is only after a long series of moultings, extending in some cases over two years, that their maturity is signalized by the appearance of sexual organs.
Chilognatha or Millepedes and Chilopoda or Centipedes ; but recently a small myriapod, -n^th of an inch in length, was discovered by Sir J. Lubbock, among decomposing vegetable matter, differing from the other members of the class in the absence of tracheae, apparently absorbing air through its semi-transparent skin, in the smaller number of its legs (nine pairs), and in the bifid character of its antenna}; and this has been made the type of a third order Pauropidce. Pauropus Huxleyi Lubbock describes as an active, cleanly little creature, with a look of cheerful intelligence, in marked contrast to the dull stupidity of the Julidce, or the melancholy ferocity of the centipede. Millepedes, or " Thousand-Legs," are readily distinguished fioni the other group by their antennae, which are always six or seven jointed, by the generally cylindrical shape of the body, and by the possession of two pairs of legs on each segment the last posterior segments and a few anterior excepted. Each segment also beais a pair of stigmata or tracheal openings, instead of every alternate one, as in centipedes ; and this fact, taken in connection with the double quantity of legs, has led to the belief that each segment in the millepede has been formed by the union of
two, a view further strengthened by the presence of a
