later this committee of eleven gave way to a committee of forty who were chosen by four persons selected by the great council. After the abdication of Doge Pietro Ziani in 1229 two commissions were appointed which obtained a permanent place in the constitution and which gave emphatic testimony to the fact that the doge was merely the highest servant of the community. The first of these commissions consisted of five Correttori della promissione ducale, whose duty was to consider if any change ought to be made in the terms of the oath of investiture (promissione) administered to each incoming doge, this oath, which was prepared by three officials, being a potent factor in limiting the powers of the doge. The second commission consisted of three inquisitori sopra il doge defunto, their business being to examine and pass judgment upon the acts of a deceased doge, whose estate was liable to be mulcted in accordance with their decision. In consequence of a tie at the election of 1229 the number of electors was increased from forty to forty-one. The official income of the doge was never large, and from early times many holders of the office were engaged in trading ventures. One of the principal duties of the doge was to celebrate the symbolic marriage of Venice with the sea. This was done by casting a precious ring from the state ship, the “Bucentaur,” into the Adriatic. In its earlier form this ceremony was instituted to commemorate the conquest of Dalmatia by Doge Pietro Orseole II. in 1000, and was celebrated on Ascension day. It took its later and more magnificent form after the visit of Pope Alexander III. and the emperor Frederick I. to Venice in 1177.
New regulations for the elections of the doge were introduced in 1268, and, with some modifications, these remained in force until the end of the republic. Their object was to minimize as far as possible the influence of the individual families, and this was effected by a very complex machinery. Thirty members of the great council, chosen by lot, were reduced, again by lot, to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine and the nine elected forty-five. Then the forty-five were reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven chose the forty-one, who actually elected the doge. As the oligarchical element in the constitution developed, the more important functions of the ducal office were assigned to other officials, or to administrative boards, and he who had once been the pilot of the ship became little more than an animated figurehead, properly draped and garnished. On state occasions he was surrounded by an increasing amount of ceremonial, and in international relations he had the status of a sovereign prince of the first rank. But he was under the strictest surveillance. He must wait for the presence of other officials before opening despatches from foreign powers; he was forbidden to leave the city and was not allowed to possess any property in a foreign land. To quote H. F. Brown, “his pomp was splendid, his power limited; he appears as a symbol rather than as a factor in the constitution, the outward and visible sign of the impersonal oligarchy.” The office, however, was maintained until the closing days of the republic, and from time to time it was held by men who were able to make it something more than a sonorous title. The last doge was Lodovico Manin, who abdicated in May 1797, when Venice passed under the power of Napoleon.
In Genoa the institution of the doge dates from 1339. At first he was elected without restriction and by popular suffrage, holding office for life; but after the reform effected by Andrea Doria in 1528 the term of his office was reduced to two years. At the same time plebeians were declared ineligible, and the appointment of the doge was entrusted to the members of the great and the little councils, who employed for this purpose a machinery almost as complex as that of the later Venetians. The Napoleonic Wars put an end to the office of doge at Genoa.
See Cecchetti, Il Doge di Venezia (1864); Musatti, Storia della promissione ducale (Padua, 1888); and H. F. Brown, Venice: a Historical Sketch (1893).
DOG-FISH, a name applied to several species of the smaller sharks, and given in common with such names as hound and beagle, owing to the habit these fishes have of pursuing or hunting their prey in packs. The small-spotted dog-fish or rough hound (Scyllium canicula) and the large-spotted or nurse hound (Scyllium catulus) are also known as ground-sharks. They keep near the sea bottom, feeding chiefly on the smaller fishes and Crustacea, and causing great annoyance to the fishermen by the readiness with which they take bait. They differ from the majority of sharks, and resemble the rays in being oviparous. The eggs are enclosed in semi-transparent horny cases, known on the British coasts as “mermaids’ purses,” and these have tendril-like prolongations from each of the four corners, by means of which they are moored to sea-weed or some other fixed object near the shore, until the young dog-fish is ready to make its exit. The larger of these species attains a length of 4 to 5 ft., the smaller rarely more than 30 in. The picked dog-fish (Acanthias vulgaris, formerly known as Squalus acanthias) is pre-eminently the dog-fish. It is the most abundant of the British sharks, and occurs in the temperate seas of both northern, and southern hemispheres. It attains a length of 4 ft., but the usual length is 2 to 3 ft., the female, as in most sharks, being larger than the male. The body is round and tapering, the snout projects, and the mouth is placed ventrally some distance from the end of the snout. There are two dorsal fins, each of which is armed on its anterior edge with a sharp and slightly curved spine, hence its name “picked.” This species is viviparous, the female producing five to nine young at a birth; the young when born are 9 to 10 in. long and quite similar to the parents in all respects except size. It is gregarious, and is abundant at all seasons everywhere on the British coasts. In 1858 an enormous shoal of dog-fish, many square miles in extent, appeared in the north of Scotland, when, says J. Couch, “they were to be found floating in myriads on the surface of every harbour.” They are the special enemies of the fisherman, injuring his nets, removing the hooks from his lines, and spoiling his fish for the market by biting pieces out of them as they hang on his lines. They are however eaten, both fresh and salted, by fishermen, especially on the west coast of England, and they are sold regularly in the French markets.
DOGGER BANK, an extensive shoal in the North Sea, about 60 m. E. of the coast of Northumberland, England. Over its most elevated parts there is a depth of only about six fathoms, but the depth is generally from ten to twenty fathoms. It is well known as a fishing ground. The origin of the name is obscure; but the middle Dutch dogger signifies a trawling vessel, and was formerly applied generally to the two-masted type of vessel employed in the North Sea fisheries, and also to their crews (doggermen) and the fish taken (dogger-fish). Off the south end of the bank an engagement took place between English and Dutch fleets in 1781. On the night of the 21st of October 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War, some British trawlers of the Hull fishing fleet were fired upon by vessels of the Russian Baltic fleet under Admiral Rozhdestvensky on its voyage to the Far East, one trawler being sunk, other boats injured, two men killed and six wounded. This incident created an acute crisis in the relations between Russia and England for several days, the Russian version being that they had seen Japanese torpedo-boats, but on the 28th Mr Balfour, the English prime minister, announced that the tsar had expressed regret and that an international commission would investigate the facts with a view to the punishment of any responsible parties. The terms were settled on 25th November, the commission being composed of five officers (British, Russian, American and French, and one selected by them), to meet in Paris. On the 22nd of December the four original members, Vice-admiral Sir Lewis Beaumont, Vice-admiral Kaznakov (afterwards replaced by Vice-admiral Dubassov), Rear-admiral Davis and Vice-admiral Fournier, met and chose Admiral Baron von Spaun (Austria-Hungary) as the fifth. Their report was issued on the 25th of February 1905. While recognizing that the information received as to a possible attack led the admiral to mistake the trawlers for the enemy, the majority of the commissioners held Rozhdestvensky responsible for the firing and its results, and “being of opinion that there were no torpedo-boats either among the trawlers nor anywhere near” concluded that “the opening of fire was not justifiable,” though they absolved him and his squadron from
