remedy, but it must not be administered until the acute symptoms have subsided, else it will often increase them. It is best given in cachets or in three times its own bulk of mucilage of acacia. Various devices are adopted to disguise its odour in the breath. The clinical evidence clearly shows that none of the numerous vegetable rivals to copaiba is equal to it in therapeutic value.
COPAL (Mexican copalli, incense), a hard lustrous resin,
varying in hue from an almost colourless transparent mass to a
bright yellowish-brown, having a conchoidal fracture, and, when
dissolved in alcohol, spirit of turpentine, or any other suitable
menstruum, forming one of the most valuable varnishes. Copal
is obtained from a variety of sources; the term is not uniformly
applied or restricted to the products of any particular region or
series of plants, but is vaguely used for resins which, though
very similar in their physical properties, differ somewhat in
their constitution, and are altogether distinct as to their source.
Thus the resin obtained from Trachylobium Hornemannianum is
known in commerce as Zanzibar copal, or gum animé. Madagascar
copal is the produce of T. verrucosum. From Guibourtia
copallifera is obtained Sierra Leone copal, and another variety
of the same resin is found in a fossil state on the west coast of
Africa, probably the produce of a tree now extinct. From
Brazil and other South American countries, again, copal is
obtained which is yielded by Trachylobium Martianum, Hymenaea
Courbaril, and various other species, while the dammar resins
and the piney varnish of India are occasionally classed and
spoken of as copal. Of the varieties above enumerated by far
the most important from a commercial point of view is the
Zanzibar or East African copal, yielded by Trachylobium Hornemannianum.
The resin is found in two distinct conditions:
(1) raw or recent, called by the inhabitants of the coast sandarusiza
miti or chakazi, the latter name being corrupted by
Zanzibar traders into “jackass” copal; and (2) ripe or true
copal, the sandarusi inti of the natives. The raw copal, which
is obtained direct from the trees, or found at their roots or near
the surface of the ground, is not regarded by the natives as of
much value, and does not enter into European commerce. It
is sent to India and China, where it is manufactured into a
coarse kind of varnish. The true or fossil copal is found embedded
in the earth over a wide belt of the mainland coast of Zanzibar,
on tracts where not a single tree is now visible. The copal is not
found at a greater depth in the ground than 4 ft., and it is
seldom the diggers go deeper than about 3 ft. It occurs in
pieces varying from the size of small pebbles up to masses of
several ounces in weight, and occasionally lumps weighing 4
or 5 ℔ have been obtained. After being freed from foreign
matter, the resin is submitted to various chemical operations
for the purpose of clearing the “goose-skin,” the name given
to the peculiar pitted-like surface possessed by fossil copal.
The goose-skin was formerly supposed to be caused by the
impression of the small stones and sand of the soil into which
the soft resin fell in its raw condition; but it appears that the
copal when first dug up presents no trace of the goose-skin, the
subsequent appearance of which is due to oxidation or inter-molecular
change.
COPALITE, or Copaline, also termed “fossil resin” and
“Highgate resin,” a naturally occurring organic substance
found as irregular pieces of pale-yellow colour in the London
clay at Highgate Hill. It has a resinous aromatic odour when
freshly broken, volatilizes at a moderate temperature, and burns
readily with a yellow, smoky flame, leaving scarcely any ash.
COPÁN, an ancient ruined city of western Honduras, near the
Guatemalan frontier, and on the right bank of the Río Copán, a
tributary of the Motagua. For an account of its elaborately
sculptured stone buildings, which rank among the most celebrated
monuments of Mayan civilization, see Central America:
Archaeology. The city is sometimes regarded as identical with
the Indian stronghold which, after a heroic resistance, was
stormed by the Spaniards, under Hernando de Chaves, in 1530.
It has given its name to the department in which it is situated.
COPARCENARY (co-, with, and parcener, i.e. sharer; from
O. Fr. parçonier, Lat. partitio, division), in law, the descent of
lands of inheritance from an ancestor to two or more persons
possessing an equal title to them. It arises either by common
law, as where an ancestor dies intestate, leaving two or more
females as his co-heiresses, who then take as coparceners or
parceners; or, by particular custom, as in the case of gavelkind
lands, which descend to all males in equal degrees, or in default
of males, to all the daughters equally. These co-heirs, or
parceners, have been so called, says Littleton (§ 241), “because
by writ the law will constrain them, that partition shall be made
among them.” Coparcenary so far resembles joint tenancy in
that there is unity of title, interest and possession, but whereas
joint tenants always claim by purchase, parceners claim by
descent, and although there is unity of interest there is no
entirety, for there is no jus accrescendi or survivorship. Coparcenary
may be dissolved (a) by partition; (b) by alienation
by one coparcener; (c) by all the estate at last descending to one
coparcener, who thenceforth holds in severalty; (d) by a compulsory
partition or sale under the Partition Acts.
The term “coparcenary” is not in use in the United States, joint heirship being considered as tenancy in common.
COPE, EDWARD DRINKER (1840–1897), American palaeontologist, descended from a Wiltshire family who emigrated about 1687, was born in Philadelphia on the 28th of July 1840. At an early age he became interested in natural history, and in 1859 communicated a paper on the Salamandridae to the Academy
of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia. He was educated partly
in the University of Pennsylvania, and after further study and
travel in Europe was in 1865 appointed curator to the Academy
of Natural Sciences, a post which he held till 1873. In 1864–67
he was professor of natural science in Haverford College, and
in 1889 he was appointed professor of geology and palaeontology
in the University of Pennsylvania. To the study of the
American fossil vertebrata he gave his special attention. From
1871 to 1877 he carried on explorations in the Cretaceous strata
of Kansas, the Tertiary of Wyoming and Colorado; and in
course of time he made known at least 600 species and many
genera of extinct vertebrata new to science. Among these were
some of the oldest known mammalia, obtained in New Mexico.
He served on the U.S. Geological Survey in 1874 in New Mexico,
in 1875 in Montana, and in 1877 in Oregon and Texas. He was
also one of the editors of the American Naturalist. He died
in Philadelphia on the 12th of April 1897.
Publications.—Reports for U.S. Geological Survey on Eocene Vertebrata of Wyoming (1872); on Vertebrata of Cretaceous Formations of the West (1875); Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West (1884); The Origin of the Fittest: Essays on Evolution (New York, 1887); The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution (Chicago, 1896). Memoir by Miss Helen D. King, American Geologist, Jan. 1899 (with portrait and bibliography); also memoir by P. Frazer, American Geologist, Aug. 1900 (with portrait).
COPE, EDWARD MEREDITH (1818–1873), English classical scholar, was born in Birmingham on the 28th of July 1818. He was educated at Ludlow and Shrewsbury schools and Trinity College, Cambridge, of which society he was elected fellow in 1842, having taken his degree in 1841 as senior classic. He was for many years lecturer at Trinity, his favourite subjects being the Greek tragedians, Plato and Aristotle. When the professorship of Greek became vacant, the votes were equally divided between Cope and B. H. Kennedy, and the latter was appointed by the chancellor. It is said that the keenness of Cope’s disappointment was partly responsible for the mental affliction by which he was attacked in 1869, and from which he never recovered. He died on the 5th of August 1873. As his published
works show, Cope was a thoroughly sound scholar, with perhaps a tendency to over-minuteness. He was the author of An Introduction to Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1867), a standard work; The Rhetoric of Aristotle, with a commentary, revised and edited by J. E. Sandys (1877); translations of Plato’s Gorgias (2nd ed ., 1884) and Phaedo (revised by H. Jackson, 1875). Mention may also be made of his criticism of Grote’s account of the Sophists, in the Cambridge Journal of Classical Philology, vols. i., ii., iii. (1854–1857).
The chief authority for the facts of Cope’s life is the memoir prefixed to vol. i. of his edition of The Rhetoric of Aristotle.
