City, where he eventually became a member of Tammany Hall and active in its politics. He was an alderman from 1868 to 1870, a coroner from 1873 to 1876, a fire commissioner in 1883 and 1887, and city chamberlain from 1889 to 1890. After the fall of John Kelly he became the leader of Tammany Hall (q.v.), and for some time almost completely controlled the organization. His greatest political success was his bringing about the election of Robert A. van Wyck as first mayor of greater New York in 1897, and during van Wyck’s administration Croker is popularly supposed to have dominated completely the government of the city. After Croker’s failure to “carry” the city in the presidential election of 1900 and the defeat of his mayoralty candidate, Edward M. Shepard, in 1901, he resigned from his position of leadership in Tammany, and retired to a country life in England and Ireland. In 1907 he won the Derby with his race-horse Orby.
CROKER, THOMAS CROFTON (1798–1854), Irish antiquary and humorist, was born in Cork on the 15th of January 1798. He was apprenticed to a merchant, but in 1819, through the
interest of John Wilson Croker, who was, however, no relation
of his, he became a clerk in the Admiralty. Moore was indebted
to him in the production of his Irish Melodies for “many curious
fragments of ancient poetry.” In 1825 he produced his most
popular book, the Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South
of Ireland, which he followed up by the publication of his Legends
of the Lakes (1829), his Adventures of Barney Mahoney (1852),
and an edition of the Popular Songs of Ireland (1839). In 1827
he was made a member of the Irish Academy; in 1839 and 1840
he helped to found the Camden and Percy Societies, and in 1843
the British Archaeological Association. He wrote Narratives
Illustrative of the Contests in Ireland in 1641 and 1688 (1841), for the Camden Society, Historical Songs of Ireland, &c. (1841), for the Percy Society, and several other works. He was also a member
of the Hakluyt and the Antiquarian Society. He died in London
on the 8th of August 1854.
CROLL, JAMES (1821–1890), Scottish man of science, was
born of a peasant family at Little Whitefield, in the parish of
Cargill, in Perthshire, on the 2nd of January 1821. He was
regarded as an unpromising boy, but a trifling circumstance
aroused a passion for reading, and he made great progress in
self-education. He was apprenticed to a wheelwright at Collace
in Perthshire, but being debarred by ill-health from manual
labour, he became successively a shop-keeper and an insurance
agent. In 1859 he was made keeper of the Andersonian Museum
in Glasgow, a humble appointment, which, however, gave him
congenial occupation. In 1857, being deeply impressed by the
metaphysics of Jonathan Edwards, he had published an anonymous
volume entitled The Philosophy of Theism; but his
connexion with the Museum induced him to take up physical
science, and from 1861 onwards he studied with such perseverance
that he was enabled to contribute papers to the Philosophical
Magazine and other journals. For that magazine in 1864 he
wrote his celebrated essay “On the Physical Cause of the
Changes of Climate during Geological Epochs.” This led to
his receiving an appointment on the Scottish Geological Survey
in 1867, and for thirteen years he took charge of the Edinburgh
Office. In 1875 he summed up his researches upon the ancient
condition of the earth in his Climate and Time, in their Geological
Relations, in which he contends that terrestrial revolutions are
due in a measure to cosmical causes. This theory excited warm
controversy. Croll’s replies to his opponents are collected in his
Climate and Cosmology (1885). He had been compelled by
ill-health to withdraw from the public service in 1880; yet,
working under the greatest difficulties, and harassed by the
inadequacy of his retiring pension, he managed to produce
Stellar Evolution, discussing, among other things, the age of the
sun, in 1889; and The Philosophical Basis of Evolution, partly
a critique of Herbert Spencer’s philosophy, in 1890. He died
on the 15th of December 1890. The soundness of Croll’s astronomical
theory regarding the glacial period has since been
criticized by E. P. Culverwell in the Geological Magazine for
1895, and by others; and it is now generally abandoned. Nevertheless
it must be admitted that his character as a scientific
worker under great discouragements was nothing less than
heroic. The hon. degree of LL.D. was conferred on him in 1876
by the university of St Andrews; and he was elected F.R.S.
in the same year.
An Autobiographical Sketch of James Croll, with Memoir of his Life and Work, was prepared by J. C. Irons, and published in 1896.
CROLY, GEORGE (1780–1860), British divine and author,
son of a Dublin physician, was born on the 17th of August 1780.
He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and after ordination
was appointed to a small curacy in the north of Ireland. About
1810 he came to London, and occupied himself with literary
work. A man of restless energy, he claims attention by his
extraordinary versatility. He wrote dramatic criticisms for
a short-lived periodical called the New Times; he was one of
the earliest contributors to Blackwood’s Magazine; and to the
Literary Gazette he contributed poems, reviews and essays on
all kinds of subjects. In 1819 he married Margaret Helen
Begbie. Efforts to secure an English living for Croly were
frustrated, according to the Gentleman’s Magazine (Jan. 1861),
because Lord Eldon confounded him with a Roman Catholic
of the same name. Excluding his contributions to the daily
and weekly press his chief works were:—Paris in 1815 (1817),
a poem in imitation of Childe Harold; Catiline (1822), a
tragedy lacking in dramatic force; Salathiel: A Story of the
Past, the Present and the Future (1829), a successful romance
of the “Wandering Jew” type; The Life and Times of his late
Majesty George the Fourth (1830); Marston; or, The Soldier and
Statesman (1846), a novel of modern life; The Modern Orlando
(1846), a satire which owes something to Don Juan; and some
biographies, sermons and theological works.
Croly was an effective preacher, and continued to hope for preferment from the Tory leaders, to whom he had rendered considerable services by his pen; but he eventually received, in 1835, the living of St Stephen’s, Walbrook, London, from a Whig patron, Lord Brougham, with whose family he was connected. In 1847 he was made afternoon lecturer at the Foundling hospital, but this appointment proved unfortunate. He died suddenly on the 24th of November 1860, in London.
His Poetical Works (2 vols.) were collected in 1830. For a list of his works see Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1859).
CROMAGNON RACE, the name given by Paul Broca to a type of mankind supposed to be represented by remains found by Lartet, Christy and others, in France in the Cromagnon cave at Les Eyzies, Tayac district, Dordogne. At the foot of a steep rock near the village this small cave, nearly filled with debris, was found by workmen in 1868. Towards the top of the loose strata three human skeletons were unearthed. They were those of an old man, a young man and a woman, the latter’s skull bearing the mark of a severe wound. The skulls presented such special characteristics that Broca took them as types of a race. Palaeolithic man is exclusively long-headed, and the dolichocephalic appearance of the crania (they had a mean cephalic index of 73.34) supported the view that the “find” at Les Eyzies was palaeolithic. It is, however, inaccurate to state that brachycephaly appears at once with the neolithic age, dolichocephaly even of a pronounced type persisting far into neolithic times. The Cromagnon race may thus be, as many anthropologists believe it, early neolithic, a type of man who spread over and inhabited a large portion of Europe at the close of the Pleistocene period. Some have sought to find in it the substratum of the present populations of western Europe. Quatrefages identifies Cromagnon man with the tall, long-headed, fair Kabyles (Berbers) who still survive in various parts of Mauritania. He suggests the introduction of the Cromagnon from Siberia, “arriving in Europe simultaneously with the great mammals (which were driven by the cold from Siberia), and no doubt following their route.”
See A. H. Keane’s Ethnology (1896); Mortillet, Le Préhistorique (1900); Sergi, The Mediterranean Race (1901); Lord Avebury, Prehistoric Times, p. 317 of 1900 edition.
