DEFREGGER 304 DEGREE This may involve the v^^hole body, as in dwarfs, of whom there have been some remarkable peripatetic specimens: the Corsican fairy was only 2 feet 7% inches high. Deformities the opposite of this exist, such as giants, or instances of premature or excessive local growth. O'Byrne, the Irish giant, measured 8 feet 4 inches when he died at the age of 22. Such individuals are generally subject to premature decay. (3) As regards the shape and continuity of parts. Distor- tion may occur from partial paralysis or irregular muscular action at an early stage of development, giving rise to club-foot, club-hand, etc.; or natural fissures or apertures which should close in the course of development may remain open, as in harelip, cleft palate, and spina bifida. Acquired deformities arise in various ways as the result of injury or disease at any period after birth. Another group of these affections, known as "trade" de- forniities, are directly traceable to the special work done by the person suffering from them. See Darwinian Theory. DEFREGGER, FRANZ (def-reg'er) , a German genre painter of deserved popularity; born in Stronach, in 1835. The subjects of almost all his pictures are dravra from the Tyrolese peasant life, his few religious pictures having been in the main unsuccessful. DEGENERATION, a biological term used to describe those not unfrequent cases where an entire organism falls be- low the structural level of its young stages, or where an organ in the same way loses its fullness of function, and becomes more or less atrophied, abortive, and simplified. Thus many parasitic worms, crustaceans, etc., are emphati- cally sim^^ler than their free-swimming larvae, and the sensile adult Ascidian shows only traces of the vertebrate characters which are plain enough in the active young. Thus, too, a crustacean which starts with a well-developed eye, may exhibit the gradual loss of this on assuming a dark habitat. The term is best confined to cases where a level of structure exhibited during early life is more or less lost in the adult. Degener- ation must be distinguished (a) from occasional abortion, (6) from reversion to an ancestral type, and (c) from the occurrence of rudimentary and unde- veloped organs where a character pos- sessed by ancestral types remains more or less undeveloped, or shows itself only in embryonic life. Degeneration may be due to the environment, or to r-^ssa- tion of function, or to some more subtle constitutional cause. The theory of the degeneration of man from a high state has been superseded by the belief in a development from low savagery. DEGGENDORF (deg'en-dorf ) , a town of lower Bavaria, on the Danube, which is here crossed by two bridges, 39 miles N. W. of Passau, with manufactures of paper, linen, woolens, stoneware, and matches. Its church of the Holy Sepul- cher is often visited by more than 30,000 pilgrims annually. Pop. (1905) 7,211. DE GIOSA, NICOLA (de vje-6'sa) , an Italian musician; born in Bari, May 5, 1820. His opera, "Don Checco," is very popular in Italy. His 400 songs were widelv sung. He died in Bari, July 7, 1885.* DE GOGORZA, EMILIO EDOUARDO, an American singer, born in BrookljTi, N. Y., in 1874. He was educated in Paris and in England. His musical career was begun as a boy soprano in England and in 1897 he appeared in New York City vdth Mme. Sembrich's Company at the Metropolitan Opera House. He appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras and at musical festivals, and made many tours throughout the United States as a concert singer. He married in 1911 Mme. Emma Eames, the operatic so- prano. DEGRADED, furnished with steps; an epithet in blazoning for a cross that has steps at each end, diminishing as they ascend toward the center. DEGREE, the 360th part of the cir- cumference of a circle. A degree of latitude is the length along a meri- dian, such that the difference of lati- tude between its N. and S. ends is one degree — i. e., from the two positions tne altitude of the same star is seen to differ by one degree. Another definition is that two points on the earth's surface differ in latitude by one degree, when the verticals at these points make angles with the plane of the equator, differing by one degree. Were the earth perfectly spherical in shape, this distance along a meridian would be exactly equal to 1-360 of the whole meridian, and would be the same at all parts of the earth's surface; but owing to its oblately spheroidal shape it increases from the equator, where the curvature is greater, to the poles, where it is less curved. From geodetical meas- urements made, it is found that at the equator the length of a degree of latitude is 362,746.4 feet; while at the poles it is 366,479.8 feet. The differences between the length of the degi'ee of latitude in different latitudes, thus ascertained by actual measurement, is one of the proofs that the figure of the earth is not that of a sphere but that of an oblate ellip- soid.
