minister. He was always poor, and for some twelve years after 1871 he was in the direst straits. The law of copyright was not retrospective, and, though some of his plays made the fortunes of managers, they brought him nothing. In his untrustworthy autobiography, Recuerdos del tiempo viejo (1880), he complained of this. A pension of 30,000 reales secured him from want in his old age, and the reaction in his favour became an apotheosis. In 1885 the Spanish Academy, which had elected him a member many years before, presented him with a gold medal of honour, and in 1889 he was publicly crowned at Granada as the national laureate. He died at Madrid on the 23rd of January 1893.
Zorrilla is so intensely Spanish that it is difficult for foreign critics to do him justice. It is certain that the extraordinary rapidity of his methods seriously injured his work. He declares that he wrote El Caballo del Rey Don Sancho in three weeks, and that he put together El Puñal del Godo (which, like La Calentura, owes much to Southey) in two days; if so, his deficiencies need no other explanation. An improvisator with the characteristic faults of redundance and verbosity, he wrote far too much, and in most of his numbers there are numerous technical flaws. Yet the richness of his imagery, the movement, fire and variety of his versification, will preserve some few of his poems in the anthologies. His appeal to patriotic pride, his accurate dramatic instinct, together with the fact that he invariably gives at least one of his characters a most effective acting part, have enabled him to hold the stage. It is by Don Juan Tenorio, the play of which he thought so meanly, that Zorrilla will be best remembered. (J. F.-K.)
ZOSIMUS, bishop of Rome from the 18th of March 417 to the 26th of December 418, succeeded Innocent I. and was followed by Boniface I. For his attitude in the Pelagian controversy, see Pelagius. He took a decided part in the protracted dispute in Gaul as to the jurisdiction of the see of Arles over that of Vienne, giving energetic decisions in favour of the former, but without settling the controversy. His fractious temper coloured all the controversies in which he took part, in Gaul, Africa and Italy, including Rome, where at his death the clergy were very much divided.
ZOSIMUS, Greek historical writer, flourished at Constantinople
during the second half of the 5th century A.D. According
to Photius, he was a count, and held the office of “advocate”
of the imperial treasury. His New History, mainly a compilation
from previous authors (Dexippus, Eunapius, Olympiodorus),
is in six books: the first sketches briefly the history of the early
emperors from Augustus to Diocletian (305); the second, third
and fourth deal more fully with the period from the accession of
Constantius and Galerius to the death of Theodosius; the fifth
and sixth cover the period between 395 and 410. The work,
which is apparently unfinished, must have been written between
450–502. The style is characterized by Photius as concise,
clear and pure. The historian's object was to account for the
decline of the Roman empire from the pagan point of view, and
in this undertaking he at various points treated the Christians
with some unfairness.
The best edition is by Mendelssohn (1887), who fully discusses the question of the authorities used by Zosimus; there is an excellent appreciation of him in Ranke's Weltgeschichte, iv. French translation by Cousin (3678); English (anonymous), 1684, 1814.
ZOSTEROPS,[1] originally the scientific name of a genus of birds founded by N. A. Vigors and T. Horsfield (Trans. Linn. Society, xv. p. 235) on an Australian species called by them Z. dorsalis, but subsequently shown to be identical with the Certhia caerulescens, and also with the Sylvia lateralis, previously described by J. Latham. The name has been Anglicized in the same sense, and, whether as a scientific or a vernacular term, applied to a great number of species[2] of little birds which inhabit for the most part the tropical districts of the Old World, from Africa to most of the islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and northwards in Asia through India and China to the Amur regions and Japan.
The birds of this group are mostly of unpretending appearance, the plumage above being generally either mouse-coloured or greenish olive; but some are varied by the white or bright yellow of their throat, breast or lower parts, and several have the flanks of a more or less lively bay. Several islands are inhabited by two perfectly distinct species, one belonging to the brown and the other to the green section, the former being wholly insular. The greater number of species seem to be confined to single islands, often of very small area, but others have a very wide distribution, and the type-species, Z. caerulescens, has largely extended its range. First described from New South Wales, where it is very plentiful, it had been long known to inhabit all the eastern part of Australia. In 1856 it was found in the South Island of New Zealand, when it became known to the Maories by a name signifying “Stranger,” and to the British as the “Blight-bird,”[3] from its clearing the fruit-trees of a blight. It soon after appeared in the North Island, where it speedily became common, and thence not only spread to the Chatham Islands, but was met with in considerable numbers 300 miles from land, as though in search of new countries to colonize. In any case it is obvious that this Zosterops must be a comparatively modern settler in New Zealand.
All the species of Zosterops are sociable, consorting in large flocks, which only separate on the approach of the pairing season. They build nests — sometimes suspended from a horizontal fork and sometimes fixed in an upright crotch — and lay (so far as is known) pale blue, spotless eggs, thereby differing wholly from several of the groups of birds to which they have been thought allied. Though mainly insectivorous, they eat fruits of various kinds. The habits of Z. caerulescens have been well described by Sir W. Buller (Birds of New Zealand), and those of a species peculiar to Ceylon, Z. ceylonensis, by Col. Legge (B. Ceylon), while those of the widely ranging Indian Z. palpebrosa and of the South-African Z. capensis have been succinctly treated by Jerdon (B. India, ii.) and Layard (B. South Africa) respectively.
It is remarkable that the largest known species of the genus, Z. albigularis, measuring nearly 6 in. in length, is confined to so small a spot as Norfolk Island, where also another, Z. tenuirostris, not much less in size, occurs; while a third, of intermediate stature, Z. strenua, inhabits the still smaller Lord Howe's Island. A fourth, Z. vatensis, but little inferior in bulk, is found on one of the New Hebrides; the rest are from one-fifth to one-third less in length, and some of the smaller species hardly exceed 312 in.
Placed by some writers, if not systematists, with the Paridae (see Titmouse), by others among the Meliphagidae (see Honey-Eater), and again by others with the Nectariniidae (see Sunbird), the structure of the tongue, as shown by H. F. Gadow (Proc. Zool. Society, 1883, pp. 63, 68, pl. xvi. fig. 2), entirely removes it from the first and third, and from most of the forms generally included among the second. It seems safest to regard the genus, at least provisionally, as the type of a distinct family—Zosteropidae—as families go among Passerine birds. (A. N.)
ZOUAVE, the name given to certain infantry regiments in
the French army. The corps was first raised in Algeria in 1831
with one and later two battalions, and recruited solely from
the Zouaves, a tribe of Berbers, dwelling in the mountains of
the Jurjura range (see Kabyles). In 1838 a third battalion
was raised, and the regiment thus formed was commanded
by Lamoricière. Shortly afterwards the formation of the
Tirailleurs algériens, the Turcos, as the corps for natives, changed
the enlistment for the Zouave battalions, and they became, as
they now remain, a purely French body. Three regiments
were formed in 1852, and a fourth, the Zouaves of the Imperial
Guard, in 1854. The Crimean War was the first service which
the regiments saw outside Algeria. There are now four
regiments, of five battalions each, four of which are permanently in
Africa, the fifth being stationed in France as a depôt regiment.
For the peculiarly picturesque uniform of these regiments, see
Uniform.
The Papal Zouaves were formed in defence of the Papal states by Lamoricière in 1860. After the occupation of Rome by Victor Emmanuel in 1870, the Papal Zouaves served the government of National Defence in France during the Franco-Prussian war, and were disbanded after the entrance of the German troops into Paris.
- ↑ The derivation is ζωστήρ-ηρος and ὤψ, whence the word should be pronounced with all the vowels long. The allusion is to the ring of white feathers round the eyes, which is very conspicuous in many species.
- ↑ In 1883 R. B. Sharpe (Cat. B. Brit. Museum, ix. pp. 146–203) admitted 85 species, besides 3 more which he had not been able to examine.
- ↑ By most English-speaking people the prevalent species of Zosterops is commonly called “ White-eye ” or “ Silver-eye.”
