Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/358

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338 VIATKA VIBURNUM nirs de chasse (1849 ; 6th ed., 1854) ; Histoire des Arabes et des Maures d'Espagne (2 vels., 1851) ; Lea merveilles de la peinture (1868 et seq.) ; and various works on Spamish and Italian art and on European art collections. He made many translations, comprising Don Quixote and novels by Cervantes, Toreno's history of the rising in Spain (5 vols., 1838), and select Rus- sian works by Gogol, Pushkin, and Turgeneff (1853-'60). An English edition of his works on Italian art appeared in 1870, entitled " Wonders of Italian Art." II. Michelle Pauline Garda, a French vocalist, wife of the preceding, born in Paris, July 18, 1821. She studied vocal music under her father, Manuel Garcia, and at a later period Liszt perfected her on the piano. In 1825 she was taken with the Garcia troupe to America, and after their return in 1828 she sang in the concerts of her sister Mme. Malibran. She first appeared in opera at London in May, 1839, as Desdemona in Rossini's Otello, and in La Cenerentola. She married M. Viardot in 1840, and with him made tours to the principal European capitals. In Paris she created in May, 1848, the character of Fides in Le pro- phete, one of her masterpieces, in which she appeared at Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Lon- don. In 1860 she had a brilliant success at the Theatre Lyrique, Paris, in Gluck's Orfeo. She possesses a mezzo-soprano voice of remarkable compass and elasticity, and is able to sing with almost equal facility in French, Italian, Ger- man, Spanish, and English ; and her dramatic genius is remarkable. She has composed a short opera, L'ogre, for which Turgeneff wrote the text, performed in 1868 during her resi- dence in Baden-Baden, and another in two acts, Le dernier magicien, performed in 1869 at the court of the grand duchess of Saxe-Wei- mar. Mme. Viardot has been for some years a professor of music at the conservatory of Paris. VIATKA. I. An E. government of European Russia, bordering on Vologda, Perm, Ufa, Ka- zan, Nizhegorod, and Kostroma; area, 59,114 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 2,406,024, including Tar- tar tribes and about 50,000 Mohammedans. The surface is mountainous in the east, where ramifications of the Ural range extend, and level or undulating in other parts. The prin- cipal rivera are the Kama, an affluent of the Volga, dividing it from Ufa, and its tributaries, the Viatka, Tcheptza, and Kilmez, all naviga- ble. The climate is severe. Grain, flax, hemp, tallow, honey, and wax are exported to Arch- angel, and furs, iron, and copper are also pro- duced. The most fertile region is that of the Kama. Woollen and linen goods and iron and copper ware are manufactured. II. A city, capital of the government, on the Viatka, 195 m. N. by E. of Kazan; pop. in 1867, 19,885. It has a fine cathedral and many other church- es, a gymnasium, a seminary, important manu- factories of woollen and other goods, and ex- tensive silver and copper works. VIBORG. I. A S. E. lun or government of Finland, Russia, bordering on the gulf of Fin- land; area, 16,611 sq. m. ; pop. in 1872, 276,- 884, chiefly Karelians. Lake Ladoga partly belongs to its territory, and it contains Lake Sainia, which establishes communication be- tween the various watersheds and the gulf. The principal occupations of the inhabitants are agriculture and mining. II. A town, capi- tal of the lun, on a deep inlet of the gulf of Finland, 74 m. N. W. of St. Petersburg ; pop. in 1867, 8,722. It has a gymnasium, a female high school, and a considerable export trade. VIBRIO (Mall.), the type of the vibrionia, a family of minute colorless organisms, arranged by Ehrenberg amd Dujardin among infusorial animals from the possession of apparently vol- untary motions, but now generally considered as microscopic plants, compound or confervoid algae of the tribe oscillatoriace. They are ex- ceedingly minute, requiring the highest powers of the microscope to make out any structure ; they appear like slender lines, straight or sinu- ous, composed of minute joints, without any visible organs of motion, though possessing contractility ; they seem to be propagated by the formation of new joints and subsequent separation at one of the articulations; their structure is best seen when dried. They ap- pear suddenly in artificial infusions, and grow rapidly in such immense numbers as to form a thick scum on the surface ; they are also found in the tartar on the teeth, in purulent dis- charges, and in other morbid fluids. The spe- cies of the genus vibrio have an undulatory and sinuous motion, like a serpent; in spirulina, which is coiled in a long spiral, the move- ments are gyratory and oscillating. In vibrio there is a single, straight row of filaments, without apparent sheath ; V. subtilis, about ffa of an inch long and ^.Vu-ff wide, is aquatic and found in pools ; some of the other species are probably the earlier stages of other un- known algte. The so-called " eels " of vinegar and sour paste, sometimes erroneously styled vibrios, are nematoid worms or entozoa; they were once popular microscopic objects. They belong to the genus anguillula (Mill!.); the A. accti or vinegar eel ie fa to -fo of an inch long, and the A. glutinis or paste worm -fa of an inch; their absence in vinegar is due to the freedom from mucilage and the usual addition of a little sulphuric acid. VIBURNUM, an ancient name of a genus of monopetalous shrubs or small trees of the hon- eysuckle family (caprifoliacea), in which there are about 80 species ; the majority are natives of North and South America, a few being found in Europe and Asia. The viburnums have opposite and simple leaves, and small white flowers in terminal, flat, compound cymes ; the very minute flowers consist of a calyx, the tube of which is coherent with the ovarry and five- toothed, a deeply five-lobed spreading corolla, and five stamens ; the one- to three-celled ovary is surmounted by a short three-lobed style, and ripens into a one-celled, one-seeded drupe, containing a single flattened stone.