COMANCHES 82 COMBRETACE^ jor, Canes Venatici, Bootes, Virgo, and Leo. COMANCHES, an aboriginal tribe of North American Indians, whose hunting grounds were the regions now known as Texas and northern Mexico. They were very numerous between 1700 and 1750, having a tribal organization under chiefs of their ovvm selection. They hunted on horseback, and were estimated to number 400,000 when first encountered by the whites. They have dwindled to about 2,000 and now live on a reservation opened in 1901 in Oklahoma. COMAYAGTJA, a city of Honduras, Central America, situated in a fertile val- ley, 1,935 feet above the sea, on the Rio Humuya, 190 miles E. of Guatemala. Founded in 1540, it has a handsome ca- thedral and a college, and before 1880 was the capital of the republic. Pop. about 3,100, COMB, a toothed implement used in every age and by all peoples for dressing and keeping clean the hair. Combs are also used for fastening the hair when dressed, and as head ornaments. Combs are made of horn, tortoise shell, ivory, wood, bone, metal, india-rubber, celluloid, and composition. Saw-cutting is the only process available for bone, ivory, and wooden combs, and it is used for the finer kinds of horn combs also. India- rubber combs, now so extensively used, are manufactured by pressing the caout- chouc to the required form in molds, and "vulcanizing" or combining it with sulphur afterward. COMB, the wax cavities in which bees lodge their honey. The comb of a bee is composed of hexagonal cells, of which there are two tiers, the cells in which are placed end to end, so that the three plates of wax, which serve as the bottom of the cell in the one tier, constitute also that of the corresponding one in the other. COMBACONUM (Kuvibhakonam) , one of the oldest and most sacred cities of India, in the center of the fertile Kaveri delta, 193 miles S. W. of Madras, with Hindu temples, a government college, etc. Pop. about 64,000. COMBINATION, in law, a combina- tion to commit a crime is an indictable Conspiracy (q. v.). A combination to commit an act which is injurious, im- moral, or contrary to public policy, is in some but not in all cases held to amount to conspiracy. Combinations of work- men to raise the rate of wages were formerly unlawful; but the law was amended in this respect in 1825, and now such combinations are freely per- mitted, provided they effect their pur- poses by lawful means. In mathematics, the different collec- tions • which may be made of certain given quantities without regard to the order in which they are arranged in each collection. The term is almost always mentioned in conjunction with permutations in which there is regard to the order of the quantities, and a department of arithmetic is technically called Permutations and Combinations. If a, h, and c be three quantities to be taken two together, there will be three possible Combinations, that is, ways of arranging them in pairs, without allow- ing b to stand before a, or c before the two letters which precede it in the alphabet. These combinations will be ah, ac, and be. But there can be six permutations of the same three letters, i. e., six distinct pairs of them if per- mission be granted to put them in any order one pleases, viz., ab, ha, ac, ca, be, cb. In chemistry, the act of uniting by means of chemical affinity; the state of being so united. There are two kinds of chemical combination, that by weight and that by volume. In a large num- ber of instances the law relating to Com- bination by weight is as follows: When two bodies, A and B, are capable of uniting, the several quantities of B, which combine with a given or constant quantity of A, stand to one another in very simple ratios. With regard to gases combining by volume, the law is that the combining volumes of all ele- mentary gases are equal, excepting those of phosphorus and arsenic, which are only half those of the other elements in the gaseous state, and those of mer- cury and cadmium, which are double those of the other elements. COMBLES, a tovm in the department of the Somme, France, 7 miles N, W, of Peronne, and 20 miles S. E, of Arras. The Germans took it during the second battle of the Somme in March, 1918, in- flicting heavy losses on the British, mostly South Africans, under General Dawson, who was captured. Attempts at counter-attack were unavailing, till the arrival of American forces and the general retreat of the Germans. COMBRETACE^, in botany, Myro- balans, an order of exogens, alliance Myrtales. It consists of trees or shrubs with alternate or opposite entire dotless leaves, destitute of stipules. The flow- ers are on axillary or terminal spikes. The calyx is adherent, with a 4-5 lobed deciduous limb. The petals, where they exist, rise from the orifice of the calyx.
