Augsburg. The peasants’ war drove him from Frankfort; he obtained (1526) a canonry at Mainz; in 1529 he became secretary to Duke George of Saxony, at Dresden and Meissen. The death of his patron (1539) compelled him to take flight. He became canon (September 1539) at Breslau, where he died on the 10th of January 1552. He was a prolific writer, largely of overgrown pamphlets, harsh and furious. His more serious efforts retain no permanent value. With humanist convictions, he had little of the humanist spirit. We owe to him one of the few contemporary notices of the young Servetus.
See C. Otto, Johannes Cochlaeus, der Humanist (1874); Haas, in I. Goschler’s Dict. encydopéd. de la théol. cath. (1858); Brecher, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (1876); T. Kolde, in A. Hauck’s Realencyklopädie für prot. Theol. u. Kirche (1898). (A. Go.*)
COCK, EDWARD (1805–1802), British surgeon, was born
in 1805. He was a nephew of Sir Astley Cooper, and through him
became at an early age a member of the staff of the Borough
hospital in London, where he worked in the dissecting room for
thirteen years. Afterwards he became in 1838 assistant surgeon
at Guy’s, where from 1849 to 1871 he was surgeon, and from 1871
to 1892 consulting surgeon. He rose to be president of the
College of Surgeons in 1869. He was an excellent anatomist, a
bold operator, and a clear and incisive writer, and though in
lecturing he was afflicted with a stutter, he frequently utilized
it with humorous effect and emphasis. From 1843 to 1849 he
was editor of Guy’s Hospital Reports, which contain many of his
papers, particularly on stricture of the urethra, puncture of the
bladder, injuries to the head, and hernia. He was the first
English surgeon to perform pharyngotomy with success, and also
one of the first to succeed in trephining for middle meningeal
haemorrhage; but the operation by which his name is known
is that of opening the urethra through the perinaeum (see Guy’s Hospital Reports, 1866). He died at Kingston in 1892.
COCKADE (Fr. cocarde, in 16th century coquarde, from coq, in allusion probably to the cock’s comb), a knot of ribbons or a rosette worn as a badge, particularly now as part of the livery
of servants. The cockade was at first the button and loop or clasp which “cocked” up the side of an ordinary slouch hat. The word first appears in this sense in Rabelais in the phrase
“bonnet à la coquarde,” which is explained by Cotgrave (1611) as a “Spanish cap or fashion of bonnet used by substantial men of yore . . . worne proudly or peartly on th’ one side.” The
bunch of ribbons as a party badge developed from this entirely utilitarian button and loop. The Stuarts’ badge was a white rose, and the resulting white cockade figured in Jacobite songs
after the downfall of the dynasty. William III.’s cockade was of yellow, and the House of Hanover introduced theirs of black, which in its present spiked or circular form of leather is worn in
England to-day by the royal coachmen and grooms, and the servants of all officials or members of the services. At the battle of Sheriffmuir in the reign of George I. the English soldiers wore
a black rosette in their hats, and in a contemporary song are called “the red-coat lads wi’ black cockades.” At the outbreak
of the French Revolution of 1789, cockades of green ribbon were adopted. These afterwards gave place to the tricolour cockade, which is said to have been a mixture of the traditional colours
of Paris (red and blue) with the white of the Bourbons, the early
Revolutionists being still Royalists. The French army wore the
tricolour cockade until the Restoration. To-day each foreign
nation has its special coloured cockade. Thus the Austrian is
black and yellow, the Bavarian light blue and white, the Belgian
black, yellow and red, French the tricolour, Prussian black and white, Russian green and white, and so on, following usually the national colours. Originally the wearing of a cockade, as soon as it had developed into a badge, was restricted to soldiers, as “to mount a cockade” was “to become a soldier.” There is still a trace of the cockade as a badge in certain military headgears in England and elsewhere. Otherwise it has become entirely the mark of domestic service. The military cocked hat, the lineal descendant of the bonnet à la coquarde, became the fashion in France during the reign of Louis XV.
See Genealogical Magazine, vols. i.-iii. (London, 1897–1899); Racinet, La Costume historique (6 vols., Paris, 1888).
COCKAIGNE (Cockayne), LAND OF (O. Fr. Coquaigne, mod.
Fr. cocagne, “abundance,” from Ital. Cocagna; “as we say
‘Lubberland,’ the epicure’s or glutton’s home, the land of all
delights, so taken in mockerie”: Florio), an imaginary country,
a medieval Utopia where life was a continual round of luxurious
idleness. The origin of the Italian word has been much disputed.
It seems safest to connect it, as do Grimm and Littré, ultimately
with Lat. coquere, through a word meaning “cake,” the literal
sense thus being “The Land of Cakes.” In Cockaigne the
rivers were of wine, the houses were built of cake and barley-sugar,
the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied
goods for nothing. Roast geese and fowls wandered about
inviting folks to eat them, and buttered larks fell from the skies
like manna. There is a 13th-century French fabliau, Cocaigne,
which was possibly intended to ridicule the fable of the mythical
Avalon, “the island of the Blest.” The 13th-century English
poem, The Land of Cockaygne, is a satire on monastic life. The
term has been humorously applied to London, and by Boileau
to the Paris of the rich. The word has been frequently confused
with Cockney (q.v.).
See D. M. Méon, Fabliaux et contes (4 vols., 1808), and F. J. Furnivall, Early English Poems (Berlin, 1862).
COCKATOO (Cacatuidae), a family of parrots characterized
among Old World forms by their usually greater size, by the crest
of feathers on the head, which can be raised or depressed at will,
and by the absence of green in their coloration. They inhabit
the Indian Archipelago, New Guinea and Australia, and are
gregarious, frequenting woods and feeding on seeds, fruits and
the larvae of insects. Their note is generally harsh and unmusical,
and although they are readily tamed when taken young,
becoming familiar, and in some species showing remarkable
intelligence, their powers of vocal imitation are usually limited.
Of the true cockatoos (Cacatua) the best known is the sulphur-crested
cockatoo (Cacatua galerita), of a pure white plumage with
the exception of the crest, which is deep sulphur yellow, and of
the ear and tail coverts, which are slightly tinged with yellow.
The crest when erect stands 5 in. high. These birds are found
in Australia in flocks varying from 100 to 1000 in number, and
do great damage to newly-sown grain, for which reason they are
mercilessly destroyed by farmers. They deposit their eggs—two
in number, and of a pure white colour—in the hollows of decayed
trees or in the fissures of rocks, according to the nature of the
locality in which they reside. This is one of the species most
usually kept in Europe as a cage bird. Leadbeater’s Cockatoo
(Cacatua Leadbeateri), an inhabitant of South Australia, excels
all others in the beauty of its plumage, which consists in great
part of white, tinged with rose colour, becoming a deep salmon
colour under the wings, while the crest is bright crimson at the
base, with a yellow spot in the centre and white at the tip.
It is exceedingly shy and difficult of approach, and its note is
more plaintive while less harsh than that of the preceding species.
In the cockatoos belonging to the genus Calyptorhynchus the
general plumage is black or dark brown, usually with a large spot
or band of red or yellow on the tail. The largest of these is known
as the funereal cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus funereus), from the
lugubrious note or call which it utters, resembling the two
syllables Wy—la—, the native name of the species. It deposits
its eggs in the hollows of the large gum-trees of Australia,
and feeds largely on the larvae of insects, in search of which it
peels off the bark of trees, and when thus employed it may
be approached closely. The cockateel (Calopsittacus novaehollandiae),
the only species in the family smaller than a pigeon,
and with a long pointed tail, is a common aviary bird, and breeds
freely in captivity.
COCKATRICE, a fabulous monster, the existence of which was firmly believed in throughout ancient and medieval times,—descriptions and figures of it appearing in the natural history works of such writers as Pliny and Aldrovandus, those of the latter published so late as the beginning of the 17th century. Produced from a cock’s egg hatched by a serpent, it was believed to possess the most deadly powers, plants withering at its touch, and men and animals dying poisoned by its look. It stood in
