with the main stream of the Ganges and the Sundarbans route, now carry by far the larger portion of the traffic. Rice is the staple crop; but the district is not as a whole fertile, the soil being sandy and the methods of cultivation backward. It is traversed by the main line and also by several branches of the Eastern Bengal railway. The battlefield of Plassey was situated in this district, but the floods of the Bhagirathi have washed away some part of it.
Nadia or Nabadwip, an ancient capital of Bengal, was formerly situated on the east bank of the Bhāgirathī, which has since changed its course. Pop. (1901) 10,880. It is celebrated for the sanctity and learning of its pundits, and as the birthplace of Chaitanya, the Vaishnav reformer of the 16th century. Its Sanskrit schools, called tols, are well known and of ancient foundation.
NADĪM [Abulfaraj Maḥommed ibn Isḥāq ibn abī Yaʽqūb un-Nadīm] (d. 995), of Bagdad, the author of one of the most interesting works in Arabic literature, the Fihrist ul-ʽUlūm (“list of the books of all nations that were to be found in Arabic”) with notices of the authors and other particulars, carried down to the year 988. A note in the Leiden MS. places the death of the author eight years later. Of his life we know nothing. His work gives us a complete picture of the most active intellectual period of the Arabian empire. He traces the rise and growth of philology and belles-lettres, of theology, orthodox and heretical, of law and history, of mathematics and astronomy, of medicine and alchemy; he does not despise the histories of knights errant, the fables of Kalila and Dimna, the facetiae of the “boon companions,” the works of magic and divination. But to us no part of his work is more interesting than his account of the beliefs of sects and peoples beyond Islam. Here, fortunately, still more than in other parts of his work, he goes beyond the functions of the mere cataloguer; he tells what he learned of China from a Christian missionary of Nejrān, of India from a description of its religion compiled for the Barmecide Yaḥya; his full accounts of the Sabians of Harran and of the doctrines of Mani are of the first importance for the historian of Asiatic religions.
Imperfect manuscripts of the Fihrist exist in Paris, Leiden and Vienna. The text was prepared for publication by G. Flügel, and edited after his death by J. Rodiger and A. Müller (2 vols., Leipzig, 1871–1872). Flügel had already given a full analysis of the work in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, vol. xiii. (1859), pp. 559-650; cf. E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia (London, 1902), pp. 383-387. T. Houtsma supplied a lacuna in Flügel’s edition in the Vienna Oriental Journal, vol. iv. pp. 217 sqq.
NADIR (Arabic naḍīr, “opposite to,” used elliptically for
naḍīr-es-semt, “opposite to the zenith”), a term used in astronomy
for the point in the heavens exactly opposite to the zenith, the
zenith and nadir being the two poles of the horizon. It is thus
used figuratively of the lowest depth of a person’s spirits or the
lowest point in a career.
NAEGELI, KARL WILHELM VON (1817–1891), Swiss botanist, was born on the 27th of March 1817 near Zurich. He studied botany under A. P. de Candolle at Geneva, and graduated with a botanical thesis at Zurich in 1840. His attention having been directed by M. J. Schleiden, then professor of botany at Jena, to the microscopical study of plants, he engaged more particularly in that branch of research. Soon after graduation he became Privat dozent and subsequently professor extraordinary, in the university of Zurich; in 1852 he was called to fill the chair of botany in the university of Freiburg-in-Breisgau; and in 1857 he was promoted to Munich, where he remained as professor until his death on the 11th of May 1891. Among his more important contributions to science were a series of papers in the Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Botanik (1844–1846); Die neuern Algensysteme (1847); Gattungen einzelliger Algen (1849); Pflanzenphysiologische Untersuchungen (1855–1858), with C. E. Cramer; Beiträge zur wissenschaftlichen Botanik (1858–1868); a number of papers contributed to the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, forming three volumes of Botanische Mitteilungen (1861–1881); and, finally, his volume, Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre, published in 1884.
The more striking of his many and varied discoveries are embodied in the Zeitsch. für wiss. Bot. In this we begin with Naegeli’s extension of Robert Brown’s discovery of the nucleus to the principal families of Cryptogams, and the assertion of its universal occurrence in plants, together with the recognition of its vesicular structure. There is further his investigation of the “mucous layer” (Schleimschicht) lining the wall of all normal cells, where he shows that it consists of granular “mucus,” which, at an earlier stage, filled the cell-cavity, and which differs chemically from the cell-wall in that it is nitrogenous. This layer he proved to be never absent from living cells—to be, in fact, itself the living part of the cell, a discovery which was simultaneously (1846) made by Hugo von Mohl (1805–1872), who gave to the living matter of the plant-body the name “protoplasm.” In connexion with these discoveries, Naegeli controverted Schleiden’s view of the universality of free-cell-formation as the mode of cell-multiplication, and showed that in the vegetative organs, at least, new cells are formed by division. In the Zeitschrift, too, is Naegeli’s most important algological work—such as the paper on Caulerpa, which brought to light the remarkable unseptate structure of the Siphoneae, and his research on Delesseria, which resulted in the discovery of growth by a single apical cell. This discovery led Naegeli on to the study of the growing-point in other plants. He consequently gave the first accurate account of the apical cell, and of the mode of growth of the stem in various Mosses and Liverworts. Subsequently he observed that in Lycopodium and in Angiosperms the growing-point has no apical cell, but consists of a small-celled meristem, in which the first differentiation of the permanent tissues can be traced. One of the most remarkable discoveries recorded in the Zeitschrift is that of the antheridia and spermatozoids of Ferns and of Pilularia. The Beiträge zur wiss. Botanik consists almost entirely of researches into the anatomy of vascular plants, while the main feature of the Pflanzenphysiologische Untersuchungen is the exhaustive work on the structure, development and various forms of starch-grains. The Botanische Mitteilungen include a number of papers in all departments of botany, many of them being continuations and extensions of his earlier work. In his Theorie der Abstammungslehre Naegeli introduced the idea of a definite material basis for heredity; the substance he termed “idioplasm.” His theory of evolution is that the idioplasm of any one generation is not identical with that of either its progenitors or its progeny: it is always increasing in complexity, with the result that each successive generation marks an advance upon its predecessor. Hence variation takes place determinately, and in the higher direction only; while variability is the result of internal causes, and natural selection plays but a small part in evolution. Whereas, on the Darwinian theory, all organization is adaptive, according to Naegeli the development of higher organization is the outcome of the spontaneous evolution of the idioplasm.
More detailed accounts of Naegeli’s life and work are to be found in Nature, 16th October 1891, and in Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. li. (S. H. V.*)
NAESTVED, a town of Denmark, in the amt (county) of
Praestö, near the S.W. coast of Zealand, 59 m. by rail S.W. of
Copenhagen. Pop. (1901) 7162. From 1140 to the Reformation
it was one of the most important towns of the kingdom, though
dependent upon the monastery of St Peter (founded here in
1135). North of the town (114 m.) lies Herlufsholm, where
Admiral Herluf Trolle founded a Latin school in 1567, still
extant.
NAEVIUS, GNAEUS (c. 264–? 194 B.C.), Latin epic poet and dramatist. There is great uncertainty in regard to his life. From the expression of Gellius (i. 24. 1) characterizing his epitaph as written in a vein of “Campanian arrogance” it has been inferred that he was born in one of the Latin communities settled in Campania. But the phrase “Campanian arrogance” seems to have been used proverbially for “gasconade”; and, as there was a plebeian gens Naevia in Rome, it is quite as probable that he was by birth a Roman citizen. He served either in the Roman army or among the socii in the first Punic War, and thus must have reached manhood before 241. His career as a dramatic author began with the exhibition of a drama in or about the year 235, and continued for thirty years. Towards the close he incurred the hostility of some of the nobility, especially, it is said, of the Metelli, by the attacks which he made upon them on the stage, and at their instance he was imprisoned (Plautus, Mil. Glor. 211). After writing two plays during his imprisonment, in which he is said to have apologized for his former rudeness (Gellius iii. 3. 15), he was liberated through the interference of the tribunes of the commons; but he had shortly afterwards to retire from Rome (in or about 204) to Utica. It may have been during his exile, when withdrawn from his active career as a dramatist, that he composed or completed his
