See Sir N. H. Nicolas, Treatise on the Law of Adulterine Bastardy 1833); and G. E. C(okayne), Complete Peerage (1887), vol. i.
KNOT, a Limicoline bird very abundant at certain seasons
on the shores of Britain and many countries of the northern
hemisphere. Camden in the edition of his Britannia published
in 1607 (p. 408) inserted a passage not found in the earlier issues
of that work, connecting the name with that of King Canute,
and this account of its origin has been usually received. But no
other evidence in its favour is forthcoming, and Camden’s statement
is merely the expression of an opinion,[1] so that there is
perhaps ground for believing him to have been mistaken, and
that the clue afforded by Sir Thomas Browne, who (c. 1672)
wrote the name “Gnatts or Knots,” may be the true one.[2] Still
the statement was so determinedly repeated by successive
authors that Linnaeus followed them in calling the species
Tringa canutus, and so it remains with nearly all modern ornithologists.[3]
Rather larger than a snipe, but with a shorter bill
and legs, the knot visits the coasts of some parts of Europe, Asia
and North America at times in vast flocks; and, though in temperate
climates a good many remain throughout the winter,
these are nothing in proportion to those that arrive towards the
end of spring, in England generally about the 15th of May, and
after staying a few days pass northward to their summer quarters,
while early in autumn the young of the year throng to the
same places in still greater numbers, being followed a little later
by their parents. In winter the plumage is ashy-grey above
(save the rump, which is white) and white beneath. In summer
the feathers of the back are black, broadly margined with light
orange-red, mixed with white, those of the rump white, more or
less tinged with red, and the lower parts are of a nearly uniform
deep bay or chestnut. The birds which winter in temperate
climates seldom attain the brilliancy of colour exhibited by those
which arrive from the south; the luxuriance generated by the
heat of a tropical sun seems needed to develop the full richness of
hue. The young when they come from their birthplace are
clothed in ashy-grey above, each feather banded with dull
black and ochreous, while the breast is more or less deeply tinged
with warm buff. Much curiosity has long existed among zoologists
as to the egg of the knot, of which not a single identified
or authenticated specimen is known to exist in collections. The
species was found breeding abundantly on the North Georgian
(now commonly called the Parry) Islands by Parry’s Arctic
expedition, as well as soon after on Melville Peninsula by Captain
Lyons, and again during the voyage of Sir George Nares on the
northern coast of Grinnell Land and the shores of Smith Sound,
where Major Feilden obtained examples of the newly hatched
young (Ibis, 1877, p. 407), and observed that the parents fed
largely on the buds of Saxifraga oppositifolia. These are the
only localities in which this species is known to breed, for on
none of the arctic lands lying to the north of Europe or Asia has
it been unquestionably observed.[4] In winter its wanderings
are very extensive, as it is recorded from Surinam, Brazil,
Walfisch Bay in South Africa, China, Queensland and New
Zealand. Formerly this species was extensively netted in
England, and the birds fattened for the table, where they were
esteemed a great delicacy, as witness the entries in the Northumberland
and Le Strange Household Books; and the British
Museum contains an old treatise on the subject: “The maner of
kepyng of knotts, after Sir William Askew and my Lady, given
to my Lord Darcy, 25 Hen. VIII.” (MSS. Sloane, 1592, 8 cat.
663). (A. N.)
KNOT (O.E. cnotta, from a Teutonic stem knutt; cf. “knit,” and Ger. knoten), an intertwined loop of rope, cord, string or
other flexible material, used to fasten two such ropes, &c., to one
another, or to another object. (For the various forms which
such “knots” may take see below.) The word is also used for
the distance-marks on a log-line, and hence as the equivalent of
a nautical mile (see Log), and for any hard mass, resembling a
knot drawn tight, especially one formed in the trunk of a tree
at the place of insertion of a branch. Knots in wood are the
remains of dead branches which have become buried in the wood
of the trunk or branch on which they were borne. When a
branch dies down or is broken off, the dead stump becomes grown
over by a healing tissue, and, as the stem which bears it increases
in thickness, gradually buried in the newer wood. When a section
is made of the stem the dead stump appears in the section
as a knot; thus in a board it forms a circular piece of wood,
liable to fall out and leave a “knot-hole.” “Knot” or “knob”
is an architectural term for a bunch of flowers, leaves or other
ornamentation carved on a corbel or on a boss. The word is
also applied figuratively to any intricate problem, hard to disentangle,
a use stereotyped in the proverbial “Gordian knot,”
which, according to the tradition, was cut by Alexander the
Great (see Gordium).
Fig 1. | Fig 2. |
Knots, Bends, Hitches, Splices and Seizings are all ways of fastening cords or ropes, either to some other object such as a spar, or a ring, or to one another. The “knot” is formed to make a knob on a rope, generally at the extremity, and by untwisting the strands at the end and weaving them together. But it may be made by turning the rope on itself through a loop, as for instance, the “overhand knot” (fig. 1). A “bend” (from the same root as “bind”), and a “hitch” (an O.E. word), are ways of fastening or tying ropes together, as in the “Carrick bend” (fig. 21), or round spars as the Studding Sail Halyard Bend (fig. 19), and the Timber Hitch (fig. 20). A “splice” (from the same root as “split”) is made by untwisting two rope ends and weaving them together. A “seizing” (Fr. saisir) is made by fastening two spars to one another by a rope, or two ropes by a third, or by using one rope to make a loop on another—as for example the Racking Seizing (fig. 41), the Round Seizing (fig. 40), and the Midshipman’s Hitch (fig. 29). The use of the words is often arbitrary. There is, for instance, no difference in principle between the Fisherman’s Bend (fig. 18) and the Timber Hitch (fig. 20). Speaking generally, the Knot and the Seizing are meant to be permanent, and must be unwoven in order to be unfastened, while the Bend and Hitch can be undone at once by pulling the ropes in the reverse direction from that in which they are meant to hold. Yet the Reef Knot (figs. 3 and 4) can be cast loose with ease, and is wholly different in principle, for instance, from the Diamond Knot (figs. 42 and 43). These various forms of fastening are employed in many kinds of industry, as for example in scaffolding, as well as in seamanship. The governing principle is that the strain which pulls against them shall draw them tighter. The ordinary “knots and splices” are described in every book on seamanship.
Overhand Knot (fig. 1).—Used at the end of ropes to prevent their unreeving and as the commencement of other knots. Take the end a round the end b.
- ↑ His words are simply “Knotts, i. Canuti aues, vt opinor e Dania enim aduolare creduntur.” In the margin the name is spelt “Cnotts,” and he possibly thought it had to do with a well-known story of that king. Knots undoubtedly frequent the sea-shore, where Canute is said on one occasion to have taken up his station, but they generally retreat, and that nimbly, before the advancing surf, which he is said in the story not to have done.
- ↑ In this connexion we may compare the French maringouin, ordinarily a gnat or mosquito, but also, among the French Creoles of America, a small shore-bird, either a Tringa or an Aegialitis, according to Descourtilz (Voyage, ii. 249). See also Littré’s Dictionnaire, s.v.
- ↑ There are few of the Limicolae, to which group the knot belongs, that present greater changes of plumage according to age or season, and hence before these phases were understood the species became encumbered with many synonyms, as Tringa cinerea, ferruginea, grisea, islandica, naevia and so forth. The confusion thus caused was mainly cleared away by Montagu and Temminck.
- ↑ The Tringa canutus of Payer’s expedition seems more likely to have been T. maritima, which species is not named among the birds of Franz Josef Land, though it can hardly fail to occur there.