Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/188

Bweot-tasted oil, said to be equal to olive oil for culinary purposes. The fruit-stalk, immediately under the fruit, is swollen and fleshy, and assumes a pear-like shape. This swollen portion of the stalk has a pleasant acid taste, and is eaten under the name of Cashew Apple. By fermenta tion it yields an alcoholic beverage, from which a spirit for drinking is distilled in the West Indies and Brazil. The

tree also yields a gum analogous to gum arabic.

CASHGAR. See Kashgar.

CASHMERE. See Kashmir.

CASINO. See Monte Casino.

CASIRI, Michael (1710-1791), a learned Maronite, was born at Tripoli in 1710. He studied at Home, where he afterwards for ten years taught Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldee, and gave lectures in philosophy and theology. In 1748 he went to Spain, and was employed in the royal library at Madrid. He was successively appointed a member of the Royal Academy of History, interpreter of Oriental languages to the king, and joint-librarian of the Escorial. In 1763 he became principal librarian, a situa tion which he appears to have held till his death in 1791. Casiri published a work entitled Bibliotheca Arabico- Hispana, Escurialensis, 2 vols. fol., Madrid, 1760-1770. It is a catalogue of above 1800 Arabic MSS., which he found in the library of the Escorial ; and it also contains a number of quotations from Arabic works on history. The MSS. are classified according to the subjects of which they treat. The second volume, which is furnished with a copious index, gives an account of a large collection of geographical and historical MSS., which contain valuable information regarding the wars between the Moors and the Christians in Spain. A full view of the contents of the whole work, with some political comments, is given in the first appendix to Harris s Philuloyical Inquiries, and in the second appendix to Bering ton s Literary History of the Middle Ages.

CASORIA, a town of Italy, five miles north-east of Naples, in one of the most fertile districts of the Terra di Lavoo. It is the birthplace of the painter Pietro Martino. Population about 7000.

CASPE, a city of Spain, in the province of Aragon, about 5 5 miles south-east of Saragossa on the banks of the River Guadaloupe, which runs into the Ebro a short distance below the town. Its prosperity is~ due to the mines of iron and of coal which abound in its vicinity, and which have given rise to manufactories. It has a castle and several convents and hospitals, and is famous in history as the scene of the congress of the Aragonians, Catalonians, and Valencians in 1412, which elected Ferdinand of Castile to the throne. It was captured from the Moors by Alphonso II. in 1168, and bestowed on the knights of St John. Population in 1867, 9402.

CASPIAN SEA. The Caspian Sea, which was known under that name to the Greeks and Romans (Herodotus having given a generally accurate account of it, stating that it is an inland sea having no connection with the ocean), is the largest of those salt lakes or closed inland seas which may be considered as " survivals " of former oceanic areas ; and it is the one whose physical and biological conditions have been most fully studied.^[1] These conditions are in many respects extremely peculiar; and tolerably certain conclusions of great interest may be drawn from them, in regard to the past history of the large extent of low steppes that lie chiefly in Asia, but partly in Europe also to the east, north, and west of its present area. These will be most fitly considered after a general survey has been taken of the existing basin of the Caspian, and of its relations to the surrounding land.

The general form of the Ca spian may be described as a broad band, with sides almost straight and parallel, except near its northern end, where it turns sharply round to the east. The general direction of its axis is about N.N.E. and S.S.W., ranging from lat. 47 20 to 36 40 N., its most northerly point nearly coinciding with the mouth of the River Ural, and its most southerly being about half way between the towns of Reshd and Astrabad. The distance in a straight line between these two points is about 740 miles in a straight line. The average breadth of its middle portion is about 210 miles, but the eastern extension of its northern portion into the Bay of Mertvy Kultuk increases the width of that part to 430 miles ; and its southern portion also widens to nearly 300 miles. The total area is estimated at about 180,000 square miles.

The most important fact in the physical geography of the existing Caspian is that its surface is 84 feet below that of the Black Sea, which may be considered as not differ ing much from the general oceanic level.

Sketch Map of Caspian Sea.

The basin of the Caspian may be considered as consisting of three distinct parts, the northern, the middle, and

the southern. The northern portion is extremely shallow, its bottom, which is nowhere more than 50 feet below the surface, being a continuation of the almost imperceptible slope of the steppe, so that there is no definite shore-line. It is into this portion that the Volga, the Ural, and the Kuma discharge themselves ; and the deposit of alluvium which these rivers bring down is gradually raising its bottom, and will in time convert it into a salt marsh. Along the north-western border of this basin, from the delta of the Volga to that of the Kuma, a space of 250 miles, the shore is gashed with thousands of narrow channels, termed limans, from 12 to 30 miles in length, separated by chains of hillocks called bugors, which pass landwards into the level ground of the steppes. In the neighbourhood of the mouths of the Volga and Kuma, the

excess of water which these rivers bring down at the time

---

1. 1 See especially the "Kaspische Studien " of Prof. Von Baer, in the St Petersburg Bull. Sci,, and in Erman s Archiv. Kuss., 1355, 1356.