NEBRASKA CITY, a city and county-seat of Otoe co., Neb.; on the Missouri river and on the Burlington Route and the Missouri Pacific railroads; 60 miles E. by S. of Lincoln. Here are the State Institution for the Blind, a United States government building, public library, St. Bernard's Academy, high school, water-works, street railroad, electric lights, several daily and weekly newspapers, and banks. The city has extensive stock yards, lumber and planing mills, cereal and flour mills, starch factory, foundry, plow factories, a meat-packing plant and brickyards. Pop. (1910) 5,488; (1920) 6,279.
NEBRASKA, UNIVERSITY OF, a coeducational institution, founded at Lincoln, Neb., in 1869. There were in 1919 5,529 students with 200 teachers. The endowment fund amounted to $809,000,000 and the value of grounds and buildings to $4,500,000. There are 145,000 volumes in the library. The total income amounted to approximately $2,280,000. The president is Samuel Avery, Ph. D.
NEBRASKA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, a coeducational institution in University Place, Neb.; founded in 1887 under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church; reported at the close of 1919: Professors and instructors, 45; students, 853; volumes in the library, 4,500; productive funds, $10,000; grounds and buildings valued at $150,000; benefactions, $1,579; income, $13,227; number of graduates, 895; president, I. B. Schreckengast, D. D.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR, or NABOPOLASSAR, a king of Babylon, who reigned from 626 to 605 B. C. He united with Astyages in the conquest of Syria, and founded the second Syrio-Babylonian empire.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR, or NEBUCHADREZZAR, surnamed The Great, a king of Babylon, the son and successor of the preceding. He immediately entered on a war, by which he extended his empire over the greater part of Asia, and from the Caucasian Mountains in the N. to the Great Desert of Africa in the S. He defeated the Edomites and Ammonites, took Jerusalem, and led the inhabitants captive to Babylon. His vassal king of Judah, Jehoiakim, having revolted, he 13 years later deposed him, and put an end to the kingdom of Judah. He next turned his arms against Tyre, which after an obstinate resistance of more than 12 years, he finally took, and which, with Egypt and Persia, made his empire and power enormous. The celebrated hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the world, were executed by this monarch, to please his beautiful wife, a Median princess. He died 562 B. C.
NEBULA, plural NEBULÆ, in astronomy, a slight cloudy patch of light, retaining its form unchanged except under keen and long-continued observation. More than 8,000 nebulæ, or star-clusters, closely resembling them, have been found in both hemispheres, and in nearly every constellation. A few, as the great nebulæ of Orion, Argo Navis, and Andromeda, are visible on very clear nights to the naked eye; the rest are telescopic. When greatly magnified some are found to be composed of many thousand remote stars, others remain only as diffused masses of light.
The great nebula of Orion surrounds a multiple star, Theta Orionis, consisting of six, apparently revolving round their common center of gravity. It has been found to alter its form very slightly. The spectroscope has shown that many of the nebulæ are merely gaseous. The nebulæ in Andromeda has a bright ball in the center and is spindle-shaped. In pathology, a slight speck on the cornea; also a mist or cloud suspended in the urine.
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS, in astronomy, a hypothesis first suggested by Sir William Herschel, though the germs of it may be found in Kant's “General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens,” printed in 1755. It was developed by La Place, with whose name it came to be associated. The hypothesis assumes that originally all suns were in a nebulous or ultra-gaseous state. The nebulous matter from which they were originally formed was at first scattered pretty uniformly through all space, but ultimately began to gravitate toward certain centers. Further contraction producing increased velocity, ring after ring would be cast off, till the central body or sun generated a whole system of planets revolving around it. They, in turn, might in the same way produce satellites. La Place believed that the sun thus produced our earth and the other attendant planets. On this hypothesis the rings of Saturn were produced by Saturn himself, and have remained in the annular form instead of condensing into nearly spherical satellites. Many people supposed that the resolution of various nebulæ into stars (see Nebula) was necessarily fatal to the nebular hypothesis, but the discovery that some are not only irresolva-
