all of which the writer declares became incarnate in Jesus. Cf. also Heb. i. 3 (“effulgence of the [Shekinah] glory”).
In Talmud and Midrash.—It is remarkable that the memra ( = Logos or “Word”) of the Targums almost entirely disappears in the Midrashic literature and the Talmud, its place being taken by Shekinah. The Rabbis apparently dreaded the possibility of such terms becoming hypostasized into personal entities distinct from God. Against this they emphasized the Shekinah-ideal. It is safe to say that wherever Shekinah is mentioned in Rabbinic literature it is God's direct action or activity that is thought of. Independent personality is never imputed to it.[1] It is probable that the use of the term was often in Rabbinic writings polemical (against Jewish Christians or gnostic sects).
See under “Shekinah” in Hastings' Dict. of the Bible, and Dict. of Christ and the Gospels, and in the Jewish Encyclopedia; also Weber, Jüdische Theologie, 2nd ed., especially pp. 185–190. For the Targums in English, cf. Etheridge, The Targums on the Pentateuch (2 vols., 1862 and 1865); and Pauli, The Chaldee Paraphrase of the Prophet Isaiah (London, 1871). (G. H. Bo.)
SHELBY, ISAAC (1750–1826), American soldier and pioneer, was born at North Mountain, near Hagerstown, Maryland, on the 11th of December 1750. With his father, Evan Shelby (1720–1794), an emigrant from Wales, he removed to what is now Bristol, Tennessee, in 1771, and in 1774 took a conspicuous part in the battle of Point Pleasant.[2] He was a surveyor in Kentucky for the Transylvania Company in 1775; became a captain of Virginia minute-men in 1776, and in 1777 became commissary with supervision over transportation of supplies from Staunton, Virginia, to the frontier. In 1779 he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, but, by the line established between Virginia and North Carolina at this time, he became a resident of North Carolina and he was appointed colonel of the Sullivan county militia, which in 1780 he commanded in guerilla fighting, and he led the left centre of the American force at King's Mountain (October 7). He served under General Francis Marion in 1781, and in 1782 was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons. He was active in the movement for the erection of the state of Kentucky, was a member of the Kentucky Constitutional Convention of 1792, and was governor of the new state in 1792–1796 and in 1812–1816; in 1813 he commanded twelve Kentucky regiments at the battle of the Thames, and for his services received the thanks of Congress and a gold medal. In 1818 he was a commissioner with Andrew Jackson to the Chickasaws. He died on his estate in Lincoln county, Kentucky, on the 18th of July 1826.
SHELBYVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Shelby county, Indiana, U.S.A., about 27 m. S.E. of Indianapolis, on the Big Blue river. Pop. (1890) 5451; (1900) 7169, including 326 foreign-born; (1910) 9500. It is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis and the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis railways, and by an interurban electric line. It has a public library, a hospital and a children's home. The city is a trading centre for the surrounding farming region; among its manufactures furniture is the most important. Shelbyville, named in honour of General Isaac Shelby of Kentucky, was platted in 1822, incorporated as a town in 1850, and chartered as a city in 1860.
SHELD-DRAKE, or, as commonly spelt in its contracted form, Sheldrake, a word whose derivation[3] has been much discussed, one of the most conspicuous birds of the duck tribe, Anatidae, called, however, in many parts of England the “Burrow-Duck” and in some districts by the almost obsolete name of “Bergander” (Du. Berg-eende, Ger. Bergente), a word used by Turner in 1544.
The sheldrake is the Anas tadorna[4] of Linnaeus, and the Tadorna cornuta of modern ornithology, a bird somewhat larger and of more upright stature than an ordinary duck, having its bill, with a basal fleshy protuberance (whence the specific term cornuta), pale red, the head and upper neck very dark glossy green, and beneath that a broad white collar, succeeded by a still broader belt of bright bay extending from the upper back across the upper breast. The outer scapulars, the primaries, a median abdominal stripe, which dilates at the vent, and a bar at the tip of the middle tail-quills are black; the inner secondaries and the lower tail-coverts are grey; and the speculum or wing-spot is a rich bronzed-green. The rest of the plumage is pure white, and the legs are flesh-coloured. There is little external difference between the sexes, the female being only somewhat smaller and less brightly coloured. The sheldrake frequents the sandy coasts of nearly the whole of Europe and North Africa, extending across Asia to India, China and Japan, generally keeping in pairs and sometimes penetrating to favourable inland localities. The nest is always made under cover, usually in a rabbit-hole among sand hills, and in the Frisian Islands the people supply this bird with artificial burrows, taking large toll of it in eggs and down.
T. radjah of Australia, Papuasia and the Moluccas almost equals the true sheldrake in its brightly contrasted plumage, but the head is white in both sexes. Barbary, south-eastern Europe, and Central Asia are inhabited by an allied species of more inland range and very different coloration, the T. casarca or Casarca rutila of ornithologists, the ruddy sheldrake of English authors—for it has several times strayed to the British Islands and the “Brahminy Duck” of Anglo-Indians, who find it resorting in winter, whether by pairs or by thousands, to their inland waters. This species is of an almost uniform bay colour all over, except the quill-feathers of the wings and tail, and (in the male) a ring round the neck, which are black, while the wing-coverts are white and the speculum shines with green and purple; the bill and legs are dark-coloured.[5] A species closely resembling the last, but with a grey head, C. cana, inhabits South Africa. In Australia occurs another species of more sombre colours, the C. tadornoides; and New Zealand is the home of another species, C. variegata, still less distinguished by bright hues. In the last two the plumage of the sexes differs not inconsiderably.
Sheldrakes will, if attention be paid to their wants, breed freely in captivity, crossing if opportunity be given them with other species, and an incident therewith connected possesses an importance hardly to be overrated by the philosophical naturalist. In the Zoological Society's gardens in London in the spring of 1859 a male of T. cornuta mated with a female of C. cana, and, as will have been inferred from what has been before stated, these two species differ greatly in the colouring of their plumage. The young of their union, however, presented an appearance wholly unlike that of either parent, and an appearance which can hardly be said, as has been said (P.Z.S., 1859, p. 442), to be “a curious combination of the colours of the two.” Both sexes of this hybrid have been admirably portrayed by J. Wolf; and, strange to say, when these figures are compared with equally faithful portraits by the same master of the Australian and New Zealand species, C. tadornoides and C. variegata, it will at once be seen that the hybrids present an appearance almost midway
- ↑ Maimonides, however, regarded the Shekinah, like the memra and “the glory,” as a distinct entity.
- ↑ Isaac Shelby's letter describing the battle is printed in Theodore Roosevelt's Winning of the West, i. 341–344.
- ↑ Ray in 1674 (Engl. Words, p. 76) gave it from the local “sheld” ( = particoloured), which, applied to animals, as a horse or a cat, still survives in East Anglia. This opinion is not only suitable but is confirmed by the bird's Old Norsk name Skjöldungr, from Skjöldr, primarily a patch, and now commonly bestowed on a piebald horse, just as Skjalda (Cleasby's Icel. Dict., sub voce), from the same source, is a particoloured cow. But some scholars interpret Skjöldungr by the secondary meaning of Skjöldr, a shield, asserting that it refers to “the shield-like band across the breast” of the bird. If they be right the proper spelling of the English word would be “Shield-drake,” as some indeed have it. A third suggested meaning, from the Old Norsk Skjól, shelter, is philologically to be rejected, but, if true, would refer to the bird's habit, described in the text, of breeding under cover.
- ↑ This is the Latinized form of the French Tadorne, first published by Belon (1555), a word on which Littré throws no light except to state that it has a southern variant Tardone.
- ↑ Jerdon (B. India, iii. 793) tells of a Hindu belief that once upon a time two lovers were transformed into birds of this species, and that they or their descendants are condemned to pass the night on the opposite banks of a river, whence they unceasingly call to one another: “Chakwa, shall I come?” “No, Chakwi.” “Chakwi, shall I come?” “No, Chakwa.” As to how, in these circumstances, the race is perpetuated the legend is silent.
