northern portion of the Australian region; and Hydrophasianus, the most extravagant form of the whole, is found in India, Ceylon and China. In habits the jaçanás have much in common with the water-hens, but that fact is insufficient to warrant the affinity asserted to exist between the two groups; for in their osteological structure there is much difference, and the resemblance seems to be only that of analogy. The Parridae lay very peculiar eggs of a rich olive-brown colour, in most cases closely marked with dark lines, thus presenting an appearance by which they may be readily known from those of any other birds, though an approach to it is occasionally to be noticed in those of certain Limicolae, and especially of certain Charadriidae. (A. N.)
JACINI, STEFANO, Count (1827–1891), Italian statesman and
economist, was descended from an old and wealthy Lombard
family. He studied in Switzerland, at Milan, and in German
universities. During the period of the Austrian restoration in
Lombardy (1849–1859) he devoted himself to literary and
economic studies. For his work on La Proprietà fondiaria in
Lombardia (Milan, 1856) he received a prize from the Milanese
Società d’incoraggiamento di scienze e lettere and was made a
member of the Istituto Lombardo. In another work, Sulle
condizioni economiche della Valtellina (Milan, 1858, translated
into English by W. E. Gladstone), he exposed the evils of
Austrian rule, and he drew up a report on the general conditions
of Lombardy and Venetia for Cavour. He was minister of Public
Works under Cavour in 1860–1861, in 1864 under La Marmora,
and down to 1867 under Ricasoli. In 1866 he presented a bill
favouring Italy’s participation in the construction of the St
Gotthard tunnel. He was instrumental in bringing about the
alliance with Prussia for the war of 1866 against Austria, and in
the organization of the Italian railways. From 1881 to 1886 he
was president of the commission to inquire into the agricultural
conditions of Italy, and edited the voluminous report on the
subject. He was created senator in 1870, and given the title
of count in 1880. He died in 1891.
L. Carpi’s Risorgimento italiano, vol. iv. (Milan, 1888), contains a short sketch of Jacini’s life.
JACK, a word with a great variety of meanings and applications,
all traceable to the common use of the word as a
by-name of a man. The question has been much discussed
whether “Jack” as a name is an adaptation of Fr. Jacques,
i.e. James, from Lat. Jacobus, Gr. Ἰάκωβος, or whether it is a
direct pet formation from John, which is its earliest and universal
use in English. In the History of the Monastery of St Augustine
at Canterbury, 1414, Jack is given as a form of John—Mos est
Saxonum ... verba et nomina transformare ... ut ... pro
Johanne Jankin sive Jacke (see E. W. B. Nicholson, The Pedigree
of Jack and other Allied Names, 1892). “Jack” was early used
as a general term for any man of the common people, especially
in combination with the woman’s name Jill or Gill, as in the
nursery rhyme. The New English Dictionary quotes from the
Coventry Mysteries, 1450: “And I wole kepe the feet this tyde
Thow ther come both Iakke and Gylle.” Familiar examples of
this generic application of the name are Jack or Jack Tar for a
sailor, which seems to date from the 17th century, and such
compound uses as cheap-jack and steeple-jack, or such expressions
as “jack in office,” “jack of all trades,” &c. It is a further
extension of this that gives the name to the knave in a pack of
cards, and also to various animals, as jackdaw, jack-snipe, jack-rabbit
(a species of large prairie-hare); it is also used as a
general name for pike.
The many applications of the word “jack” to mechanical devices and other objects follow two lines of reference, one to objects somewhat smaller than the ordinary, the other to appliances which take the place of direct manual labour or assist or save it. Of the first class may be noticed the use of the term for the small object bowl in the game of bowls or for jack rafters, those rafters in a building shorter than the main rafters, especially the end rafters in a hipped roof. The use of jack as the name for a particular form of ship’s flag probably arose thus, for it is always a smaller flag than the ensign. The jack is flown on a staff on the bowsprit of a vessel. In the British navy the jack is a small Union flag. (The Union flag should not be styled a Union Jack except when it is flown as a jack.) The jack of other nations is usually the canton of the ensign, as in the German and the United States navies, or else is a smaller form of the national ensign, as in France. (See Flag.)
The more common use of “jack” is for various mechanical and other devices originally used as substitutes for men or boys. Thus the origin of the boot-jack and the meat-jack is explained in Isaac Watts’s Logic, 1724: “So foot boys, who had frequently the common name of Jack given them, were kept to turn the spit or pull off their masters’ boots, but when instruments were invented for both these services, they were both called jacks.” The New English Dictionary finds a transitional sense in the use of the name “jack” for mechanical figures which strike the hours on a bell of a clock. Such a figure in the clock of St Lawrence Church at Reading is called a jack in the parish accounts for 1498–1499. There are many different applications of “jack,” to certain levers and other parts of textile machinery, to metal plugs used for connecting lines in a telephone exchange, to wooden uprights connecting the levers of the keys with the strings in the harpsichord and virginal, to a framework forming a seat or staging which can be fixed outside a window for cleaning or painting purposes, and to many devices containing a roller or winch, as in a jack towel, a long towel hung on a roller. The principal mechanical application of the word, however, is to a machine for raising weights from below. A jack chain, so called from its use in meat-jacks, is one in which the links, formed each in a figure of eight, are set in planes at right angles to each other, so that they are seen alternately flat or edgeways.
In most European languages the word “jack” in various forms appears for a short upper outer garment, particularly in the shape of a sleeveless (quilted) leather jerkin, sometimes with plates or rings of iron sewn to it. It was the common coat of defence of the infantry of the middle ages. The word in this case is of French origin and was an adaptation of the common name Jacques, as being a garment worn by the common people. In French the word is jaque, and it appears in Italian as giaco, or giacco, in Dutch jak, Swedish jacka and German Jacke, still the ordinary name for a short coat, as is the English jacket, from the diminutive French jaquette. It was probably from some resemblance to the leather coat that the well-known leather vessels for holding liquor or for drinking were known as jacks or black jacks. These drinking vessels, which are often of great size, were not described as black jacks till the 16th century, though known as jacks much earlier. Among the important specimens that have survived to this day is one with the initials and crown of Charles I. and the date, 1646, which came from Kensington Palace and is now in the British Museum; one each at Queen’s College and New College, Oxford; two at Winchester College; one at Eton College; and six at the Chelsea Hospital. Many specimens are painted with shields of arms, initials and other devices; they are very seldom mounted in silver, though spurious specimens with silver medallions of Cromwell and other prominent personages exist. At the end of the 17th century a smaller jack of a different form, like an ordinary drinking mug with a tapering cylindrical body, often mounted in silver, came into vogue in a limited degree. The black jack is a distinct type of drinking vessel from the leather botel and the bombard. The jack-boot, the heavy riding boot with long flap covering the knee and part of the thigh, and worn by troopers first during the 17th century, was so called probably from association with the leather jack or jerkin. The jack-boot is still worn by the Household Cavalry, and the name is applied to a high riding boot reaching to the knee as distinguished from the riding boot with tops, used in full hunting-kit or by grooms or coachmen.
Jack, sometimes spelled jak, is the common name for the fruit of the tree Artiocarpus integrifolia, found in the East Indies. The word is an adaptation of the Portuguese jaca from the Malay name chakka. (See Bread Fruit.)
The word “jackanapes,” now used as an opprobrious term for a swaggering person with impertinent ways and affected airs
