Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/232

224 CH^ERONEA CHAFFINCH It thus forms the continuation of the great pampas an plains which begin far south in Pat- agonia, and reach N. to the Salado. Owing to the nature of its climate and soil, the Chaco is naturally divided into two distinct portions, northern and southern. The northern, watered hy plenteous rains and traversed by a river of considerable magnitude, the Pilcomayo, pre- sents the usual features of intertropical coun- tries ; it is densely wooded, and clothed in im- mense tracts with a luxuriant growth of grass, with here and there wide-spreading marshes, which rarely become entirely dry between the periodical floods. Here almost all kinds of spontaneous tropical vegetation are represent- ed. The southern division may be considered as one vast desert, generally unfavorable to vegetable growth, and presenting here and there some rare specimens of dwarfish spiny plants ; but the aridity of the soil is due to the lack of moisture so common in all South America below lat. 24 8. and W. of the Plata and Paraguay. This may be overcome by ar- tificial irrigation, and several prosperous colo- nies have of late years been formed in that region. The whole of the northern portion, which belongs to Bolivia, is, with the excep- tion of a settlement established in 1872 in the N. W. corner of the territory by the Bolivian government, the undisputed home of uncivilized Indians ; while the southern, besides the colo- nies of whites already mentioned, is divided between nomadic and semi-civilized Indians, the latter having abandoned their predatory habits and established themselves by families in determined localities in imitation of the whites. The animal life in the Chaco differs in few respects from that of the neighboring portions of the Argentine and Bolivian republics. Ca- pybaras or carpinchos, and the various other larger mammals, abound on the banks of the rivers ; there are numerous species of serpents and hideous venomous spiders of immense size ; and myriads of small birds of endlessly varying plumage enliven the forests. CHJERONEi, a town of Boeotia, on the Ther- modon, a small tributary of the Cephissus, near the frontier of Phocis, renowned for the battle in which Philip of Macedon defeated the Athe- nians, Corinthians, and Thebans in 338 B. 0. This victory was largely due to Alexander, then a youth of 18, who commanded the left wing of his father's army, and broke the sacred band of the Thebans by the weight of the Ma- cedonian phalanx. It made Philip master of Greece. The Athenians lost 1,000 killed and several thousand prisoners. Another battle was fought here in 86 B. C., and won by Sulla over the army of Mithridates, king of Pontus, under Archelaus. Some remnants of the an- cient town are still visible at the village of Ca- purna, such as a theatre on the mound of the slaughtered Thebans, an aqueduct, and a broken marble lion, undoubtedly that mentioned by the historian Pausanias as having been placed above the grave of the Theban dead. Chjeronea was the birthplace of Plutarch, and the last years of his life were spent there. CHJETODON, a genus of spiny-rayed fishes, with compressed and scaly body, so named from their closely set rows of bristle-like teeth. The family to which they belong was formerly called squammipennea from the scaly character of the dorsal and anal fins; the mouth is small. They abound in tropical waters, on rocky shores, and are of brilliant colors, black, blue, green, and yellow being the Chsetodon rostratua. prevailing hues ; their flesh is good eating. In this genus, of a family containing nearly 20 genera and 150 species, the C. rottratut (Bl.), of Java, is remarkable for its faculty of ejecting drops of water from its elongated snout, so as to hit insects on the plants growing in the water and thus secure them as food ; this it does with great precision. It is of a silvery hue, with five brownish bands. CHAFFINCH (fringilla Calebs, Linn.), one of the most common and most beautiful of the passerine family of birds, a native of Europe. The color of the bill varies according to the season from a blue to a pale reddish brown ; the eyes are hazel ; the forehead black ; upper part of the head and hind neck grayish blue ; back reddish brown ; fore neck and breast purplish red or dull pink ; rump yellowish green ; the larger wing coverts black, the secondary tipped with white, the smaller black and grayish with white spots ; the quill feath- ers white at the base and along the inner mar- gin; the tail brownish black, the exterior feather obliquely marked with white, inclu- ding the middle of the outer web and the ter- minal third of the inner, the next slightly margined with white internally, and tipped with the same on the inner web ; the middle feathers brownish gray, blackish along the shafts. The female has the upper part of the head and the back light grayish brown ; the rump yellowish gray. Young like the female,