other facilities and equipments. Cooper died April 4, 1883.
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| AMERICAN COOT |
Coot, a water-bird, also called mudhen and crow-duck. It differs from the rail in having lobed toes, which assist in swimming. It is about 14 inches long, with a short tail, with a slaty-black plumage and some white marks near the tail. The bill is pointed and ivory-white, distinguishing it from the duck. It breeds in bogs, and frequents quiet pools and rivers, but prefers the neighborhood of small muddy ponds. The food is water-insects, small fish, worms, seeds, grass, etc. It lays from eight to 12 eggs, yellow-buff in color and marked with fine dots and spots of brown and very faint lilac lines.
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| E. D. COPE |
Cope, Edward Drinker (1840-97), one of the most distinguished of American naturalists. He was of Quaker descent and was widely known in the field of comparative anatomy. For many years he was editor of the American Naturalist and professor in the University of Pennsylvania. He made extensive collections of the fossil vertebrates from the rocks of the western states, and filled his house in Philadelphia to overflowing with them. He prepared several monographs for the United States government. He was a voluminous writer, but most of his writings were technical. As examples of his many publications we mention only Origin of the Fittest and Tertiary Vertebrates of North America (1889). He died at Philadelphia on April 12, 1897.
Co′penha′gen, the capital of Denmark, is on the island of Zealand, with outlying parts on the island of Amager and the mainland. The city is defended by fortifications recently built and by old forts, especially by the citadel of Frederikshavn. The square, Kongens Nytory, is the center of the town's life. Its cathedral has a baptismal font by Thorwaldsen, and the Thorwaldsen museum has many of that sculptor's works. The royal castle, called Christiansborg, has a fine art-gallery, some of the pictures in which were burned in 1884. The university, founded in 1479, has 85 professors, 400 students and a library of 250,000 volumes; while the royal library has over 500,000 volumes. Copenhagen in the middle of the 12th century was a mere fishing-village. It was made the capital in 1443. The town has had three fires, and has been besieged and bombarded many times. It was in its fine harbor that Nelson, in 1801, destroyed the Danish fleet. The annual trade of the port amounts to about $120,000,000. Its industries embrace ship-building, distilling and brewing, sugar-refining, the manufacture of porcelain, soda, machinery and textile fabrics. Population, 462,161; or with its suburbs, 559,398.
Copernicus (kō̇-pẽr′-nĭ-kŭs), Nicolaus, the founder of modern astronomy, born at Thorn in Prussia, Feb. 19, 1473; died at Frauenburg, May 24, 1543. Previous to the time of Copernicus—or, roughly speaking, previous to the discovery of America—there existed among scholars a great variety of views regarding the structure of the solar system and regarding its relation to the fixed stars. The chief merit of Copernicus is that he first solved in a fairly satisfactory manner the great problem of the motion of the planets. If not the first to propose, he certainly was the first to work out, in detail, an explanation which is so simple as to command acceptance from everyone who clearly understands it. Instead of assuming, as the Egyptians and the Greeks and most people after them had done, that the earth is the center of the solar system, Copernicus assumed that the sun is the center, that the earth and the other planets revolve about the sun in circular orbits and that the earth rotates on its own axis. There are a number of details which Copernicus was unable to explain because he did not know that the orbits of the planets are elliptical, as was proved later by Kepler. Copernicus was educated at the University of Cracow, whither he went in 1491. Later he spent some years of study at Bologna and Padua, and at the latter place he took the degree of doctor of medicine in 1499. In 1503 he went to Frauenburg, where he practiced medicine and held several important offices in the church. The years from 1507 to 1530 were spent in the preparation of his immortal book: The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies, which, however, was not printed until after his death in 1543. The defense of the Copernican system was, therefore, left largely to his successors, principally among them to Giordano Bruno of Italy and to Galileo. The position of Copernicus in history may be more easily retained in memory, if the student will recall that he and Michael Angelo were contemporaries, there being only two years' difference in their ages. On the day that Michael Angelo died, Feb. 18, 1564, Galileo, the great defender of Copernicus, was born; while in the year that Galileo died, 1642, the illustrious Newton, who was to perfect and simplify the Copernican system, was born in England.
Copley (kŏp'lĭ), John Singleton, an American painter, was born at Boston, Mass., July 3, 1737. When only 16, his portraits were admired. Washington sat to him in
