fractionations he was able to divide yttrium into distinct portions which gave different spectra when exposed in a high vacuum to the spark from an induction coil. This result he considered to be due, not to any removal of impurities, but to an actual splitting-up of the yttrium molecule into its constituents, and he ventured to draw the provisional conclusion that the so-called simple bodies are in reality compound molecules, at the same time suggesting that all the elements have been produced by a process of evolution from one primordial stuff or “protyle.” A later result of this method of investigation was the discovery of a new member of the rare earths, monium or victorium, the spectrum of which is characterized by an isolated group of lines, only to be detected photographically, high up in the ultra-violet; the existence of this body was announced in his presidential address to the British Association at Bristol in 1898. In the same address he called attention to the conditions of the world’s food supply, urging that with the low yield at present realized per acre the supply of wheat would within a comparatively short time cease to be equal to the demand caused by increasing population, and that since nitrogenous manures are essential for an increase in the yield, the hope of averting starvation, as regards those races for whom wheat is a staple food, depended on the ability of the chemist to find an artificial method for fixing the nitrogen of the air. An authority on precious stones, and especially the diamond, he succeeded in artificially making some minute specimens of the latter gem; and on the discovery of radium he was one of the first to take up the study of its properties, in particular inventing the spinthariscope, an instrument in which the effects of a trace of radium salt are manifested by the phosphorescence produced on a zinc sulphide screen. In addition to many other researches besides those here mentioned, he wrote or edited various books on chemistry and chemical technology, including Select Methods of Chemical Analysis, which went through a number of editions; and he also gave a certain amount of time to the investigation of psychic phenomena, endeavouring to effect some measure of correlation between them and ordinary physical laws. He was knighted in 1897, and received the Royal (1875), Davy (1888), and Copley (1904) medals of the Royal Society, besides filling the offices of president of the Chemical Society and of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He married Ellen, daughter of W. Humphrey, of Darlington, and their golden wedding was celebrated in 1906.
CROOKSTON, a city and the county-seat of Polk county, Minnesota, U.S.A., on the Red Lake river in the Red River
valley, about 300 m. N.W. of Minneapolis, and about 25 m. E.
of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Pop. (1890) 3457; (1900)
5359; (1905, state census) 6794, 2049 being foreign-born, including
656 from Norway (2 Norwegian weeklies are published),
613 from Canada, 292 from Sweden; (1910 U.S. census) 7559.
Crookston is served by the Great Northern and the Northern
Pacific railways. It has a Carnegie library, and the St Vincent
and Bethesda hospitals, and is the seat of a Federal Land Office
and of a state agricultural high school (with an experimental
farm). Dams on the Red Lake river provide a fine water-power,
and among the city’s manufactures are lumber, leather, flour,
farm implements, wagons and bricks. The city is situated in
a fertile farming region, and is a market for grain, potatoes and
other agricultural products, and lumber. Crookston was settled
about 1872, was incorporated in 1879, received its first city
charter in 1883, and adopted a new one in 1906. It was named
in honour of William Crooks, an early settler.
CROP (a word common in various forms, such as Germ.
Kropf, to many Teutonic languages for a swelling, excrescence,
round head or top of anything; it appears also in Romanic
languages derived from Teutonic, in Fr. as croupe, whence the
English “crupper”; and in Ital. groppo, whence English
“group”), the ingluvies, or pouched expansion of a bird’s
oesophagus, in which the food remains to undergo a preparatory
process of digestion before being passed into the true stomach.
From the meaning of “top” or “head,” as applied to a plant,
herb or flower, comes the common use of the word for the
produce of cereals or other cultivated plants, the wheat-crop,
the cotton-crop and the like, and generally, “the crops”;
more particular expressions are the “white-crop,” for such
grain crops as barley or wheat, which whiten as they grow ripe
and “green-crop” for such as roots or potatoes which do not,
and also for those which are cut in a green state, like clover
(see Agriculture). Other uses, more or less technical, of the
word are, in leather-dressing, for the whole untrimmed hide; in
mining and geology, for the “outcrop” or appearance at the
surface of a vein or stratum and, particularly in tin mining, of
the best part of the ore produced after dressing. A “hunting-crop”
is a short thick stock for a whip, with a small leather loop
at one end, to which a thong may be attached. From the verb
“to crop,” i.e. to take off the top of anything, comes “crop”
meaning a closely cut head of hair, found in the name “croppy”
given to the Roundheads at the time of the Great Rebellion,
to the Catholics in Ireland in 1688 by the Orangemen, probably
with reference to the priests’ tonsures, and to the Irish rebels
of 1798, who cut their hair short in imitation of the French
revolutionaries.
CROPSEY, JASPER FRANCIS (1823–1900), American landscape painter, was born at Rossville, Staten Island, New York,
on the 18th of February 1823. After practising architecture for
several years, he turned his attention to painting, studying in
Italy from 1847 to 1850. In 1851 he was elected a member of
the National Academy of Design. From 1857 to 1863 he had a
studio in London, and after his return to America enjoyed a
considerable vogue, particularly as a painter of vivid autumnal
effects, along the lines of the Hudson River school. He was one
of the original members of the American Water Color Society.
He continued actively in this profession until within a few days
of his death, at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, on the 22nd of
June 1900. He made the architectural designs for the stations of
the elevated railways in New York City.
CROQUET (from Fr. croc, a crook, or crooked stick), a lawn game played with balls, mallets, hoops and two pegs. The game has been evolved, according to some writers, from the paille-maille which was played in Languedoc at least as early as the 13th century. Under the name of le jeu de la crosse, or la crosserie, a similar game was at the same period immensely popular in
Normandy, and especially at Avranches, but the object appears to have been to send the ball as far as possible by driving it with the mallet (see Sports et jeux d’adresse, 1904, p. 203). Pall Mall, a fashionable game in England in the time of the Stuarts, was played with a ball and a mallet, and with two hoops or a
hoop and a peg, the game being won by the player who ran the hoop or hoops and touched the peg under certain conditions in the fewest strokes. Croquet certainly has some resemblance to paille-maille, played with more hoops and more balls. It is said that the game was brought to Ireland from the south of
France, and was first played on Lord Lonsdale’s lawn in 1852, under the auspices of the eldest daughter of Sir Edmund Macnaghten. It came to England in 1856, or perhaps a few years earlier, and soon became popular.
In 1868 the first all-comers’ meeting was held at Moreton-in-the-Marsh. In the same year the All England Croquet Club was formed, the annual contest for the championship taking place on the grounds of this club at Wimbledon.[1] But after being for ten years or so the most popular game for the country house and garden party, croquet was in its turn practically ousted by lawn tennis, until, with improved implements and a more scientific form of play, it was revived about 1894–1895. In 1896–1897 was formed the United All England Croquet Association, on the initiative of Mr Walter H. Peel. Under the name of the Croquet Association, with more than 2000 members and nearly a hundred affiliated clubs (1909), this body is the recognized ruling authority on croquet in the British Islands. Its headquarters are at the Roehampton Club, where the
- ↑ This was largely the work of W. T. Whitmore-Jones (1831–1872), generally known as W. Jones Whitmore, who subsequently formed the short-lived National Croquet Club, and was largely responsible for the first codification of the laws.
