the state archaeological and historical society. In 1908 the faculty numbered 175, and the students 2277. The institution owed its origin to federal land grants; it is maintained by the state, the United States, and by small fees paid by the students; tuition is free in all colleges except the college of law. The government of the university is vested in a board of trustees appointed by the governor of the state for a term of seven years. The first president of the institution (from 1873 to 1881) was the distinguished geologist, Edward Orton (1829–1899), who was professor of geology from 1873 to 1899.
Other institutions of learning are the Capital University and Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary (Theological Seminary opened in 1830; college opened as an academy in 1850), with buildings just east of the city limits; Starling Ohio Medical College, a law school, a dental school and an art institute. Besides the university library, there is the Ohio state library occupying a room in the capitol and containing in 1908 126,000 volumes, including a “travelling library” of about 36,000 volumes, from which various organizations in different parts of the state may borrow books; the law library of the supreme court of Ohio, containing complete sets of English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, United States and state reports, statutes and digests; the public school library of about 68,000 volumes, and the public library (of about 55,000), which is housed in a marble and granite building completed in 1906.
Columbus is near the Ohio coal and iron-fields, and has an extensive trade in coal, but its largest industrial interests are in manufactures, among which the more important are foundry and machine-shop products (1905 value, $6,259,579); boots and shoes (1905 value, $5,425,087, being more than one-sixtieth of the total product value of the boot and shoe industry in the United States, and being an increase from $359,000 in 1890); patent medicines and compounds (1905 value, $3,214,096); carriages and wagons (1905 value, $2,197,960); malt liquors (1905 value, $2,133,955); iron and steel; regalia and society emblems; steam-railway cars, construction and repairing; and oleo-margarine. In 1905 the city’s factory products were valued at $40,435,531, an increase of 16.4% in five years. Immediately outside the city limits in 1905 were various large and important manufactories, including railway shops, foundries, slaughter-houses, ice factories and brick-yards. In Columbus there is a large market for imported horses. Several large quarries also are adjacent to the city.
The waterworks are owned by the municipality. In 1904–1905 the city built on the Scioto river a concrete storage dam, having a capacity of 5,000,000,000 gallons, and in 1908 it completed the construction of enormous works for filtering and softening the water-supply, and of works for purifying the flow of sewage—the two costing nearly $5,000,000. The filtering works include 6 lime saturators, 2 mixing or softening tanks, 6 settling basins, 10 mechanical filters and 2 clear-water reservoirs. A large municipal electric-lighting plant was completed in 1908.
The first permanent settlement within the present limits of the city was established in 1797 on the west bank of the Scioto, was named Franklinton, and in 1803 was made the county-seat. In 1810 four citizens of Franklinton formed an association to secure the location of the capital on the higher ground of the east bank; in 1812 they were successful and the place was laid out while still a forest. Four years later, when the legislature held its first session here, the settlement was incorporated as the Borough of Columbus. In 1824 the county-seat was removed here from Franklinton; in 1831 the Columbus branch of the Ohio Canal was completed; in 1834 the borough was made a city; by the close of the same decade the National Road extending from Wheeling to Indianapolis and passing through Columbus was completed; in 1871 most of Franklinton, which was never incorporated, was annexed, and several other annexations followed.
See J. H. Studer, Columbus, Ohio; its History and Resources (Columbus, 1873); A. E. Lee, History of the City of Columbus, Ohio (New York, 1892).
COLUMELLA, LUCIUS JUNIUS MODERATUS, of Gades,
writer on agriculture, contemporary of Seneca the philosopher,
flourished about the middle of the 1st century A.D. His extant
works treat, with great fulness and in a diffuse but not inelegant
style which well represents the silver age, of the cultivation of
all kinds of corn and garden vegetables, trees, flowers, the
vine, the olive and other fruits, and of the rearing of cattle,
birds, fishes and bees. They consist of the twelve books of the
De re rustica (the tenth, which treats of gardening, being in
dactylic hexameters in imitation of Virgil), and of a book De arboribus, the second book of an earlier and less elaborate work
on the same subject.
The best complete edition is by J. G. Schneider (1794). Of a new edition by K. J. Lundström, the tenth book appeared in 1902 and De arboribus in 1897. There are English translations by R. Bradley (1725), and anonymous (1745); and treatises, De Columellae vita et scriptis, by V. Barberet (1887), and G. R. Becher (1897), a compact dissertation with notes and references to authorities.
COLUMN (Lat. columna), in architecture, a vertical support
consisting of capital, shaft and base, used to carry a horizontal
beam or an arch. The earliest example in wood (2684 B.C.) was
that found at Kahun in Egypt by Professor Flinders Petrie,
which was fluted and stood on a raised base, and in stone the
octagonal shafts of the early temple at Deir-el-Bahri (c. 2850).
In the tombs at Beni Hasan (2723 B.C.) are columns of two
kinds, the octagonal or polygonal shaft, and the reed or lotus
column, the horizontal section of which is a quatrefoil. This
became later the favourite type, but it was made circular on plan.
In all these examples the column rests on a stone base. (See
also Capital and Order.)
The column was employed in Assyria in small structures only, such as pavilions or porticoes. In Persia the column, employed to carry timber superstructures only, was very lofty, being sometimes 12 diameters high; the shaft was fluted, the number of flutes varying from 30 to 52.
The earliest example of the Greek column is that represented in the temple fresco at Cnossus (c. 1600 B.C.), of which portions have been found. The columns were in cypress wood raised on a stone base and tapered downwards.[1] The same, though to a less degree, is found in the stone semi-detached columns which flank the doorway of the Tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae; the shafts of these columns were carved with the chevron design.
The earliest Greek columns in stone as isolated features are those of the Temple of Apollo at Syracuse (early 7th century B.C.) the shafts of which were monoliths, but as a rule the Greek columns were all built of drums, sometimes as many as ten or twelve. There was no base to the Doric column, but the shafts were fluted, 20 flutes being the usual number. In the Archaic Temple of Diana at Ephesus there were 52 flutes. In the later examples of the Ionic order the shaft had 24 flutes. In the Roman temples the shafts were very often monoliths.
Columns were occasionally used as supports for figures or other features. The Naxian column at Delphi of the Ionic order carried a sphinx. The Romans employed columns in various ways: the Trajan and the Antonine columns carried figures of the two emperors; the columna rostrata (260 B.C.) in the Forum was decorated with the beaks of ships and was a votive column, the miliaria column marked the centre of Rome from which all distances were measured. In the same way the column in the Place Vendôme in Paris carries a statue of Napoleon I.; the monument of the Fire of London, a finial with flames sculptured on it; the duke of York’s column (London), a statue of the duke of York.
With the exception of the Cretan and Mycenaean, all the shafts of the classic orders tapered from the bottom upwards, and about one-third up the column had an increment, known as the entasis, to correct an optical illusion which makes tapering shafts look concave; the proportions of diameter to height varied with the order employed. Thus, broadly speaking, a Roman Doric column will be eight, a Roman Ionic nine, a Corinthian
- ↑ The tree-trunk used as a column was inverted to retain the sap; hence the shape.
