The Demi-Cannon weighs about 6000 pound and shoots a bullet of 28 or 30 pound. . . . These three several guns are called cannons of eight, cannons of seven and cannons of six.” The generic sense of “cannon,” in which the word is now exclusively used, is found along with the special sense above mentioned as early as 1474. A warrant of that year issued by Edward IV. of England to Richard Copcote orders him to provide “bumbardos, canones, culverynes . . . et alias canones quoscumque, ac pulveres, sulfer . . . pro eisdem canonibus necessarias.” “Artillery” and “ordnance,” however, were the more usual terms up to the time of Louis XIV. (c. 1670), about which time heavy ordnance began to be classified according to the weight of its shot, and the special sense of “cannon” disappears.
CANNON-BALL TREE (Couroupita guianensis), a native of tropical South America (French Guiana), which bears large spherical woody fruits, containing numerous seeds, as in the allied genus Bertholletia (Brazil nut).
CANNSTATT, or Kannstatt, a town of Germany in the kingdom of Württemberg, pleasantly situated in a fertile valley on both banks of the Neckar, 2½ m. from Stuttgart, with which it has been incorporated since 1904. Pop. (1905) 26,497. It is a railway centre, has two Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, two bridges across the Neckar, handsome streets in the modern quarter of the town and fine promenades and gardens. There is a good deal of business in the town. Railway plant, automobiles and machinery are manufactured; spinning and weaving are carried on; and there are chemical works and a brewery here. Fruit and vines are largely cultivated in the neighbourhood. A large population is temporarily attracted to Cannstatt by the fame of its mineral springs, which are valuable for diseases of the throat and weaknesses of the nervous system. These springs were known to the Romans. Besides the usual bathing establishments there are several medical institutions for the treatment of disease. Near the town are the palaces of Rosenstein and Wilhelma; the latter, built (1842–1851) for King William of Württemberg in the Moorish style, is surrounded by beautiful gardens. In the neighbourhood also are immense caves in the limestone where numerous bones of mammoths and other extinct animals have been found. On the Rotenberg, where formerly stood the ancestral castle of the house of Württemberg, is the mausoleum of King William and his wife.
Cannstatt (Condistat) is mentioned early in the 8th century as the place where a great court was held by Charlemagne for the trial of the rebellious dukes of the Alamanni and the Bavarians. From the emperor Louis the Bavarian it received the same rights and privileges as were enjoyed by the town of Esslingen, and until the middle of the 14th century it was the capital of the county of Württemberg. Cannstatt was the scene of a victory gained by the French over the Austrians on the 21st of July 1796.
See Veiel, Der Kurort Kannstatt und seine Mineralquellen (Cannstatt, 1875).
CANO, ALONZO (1601–1667), Spanish painter, architect and sculptor, was born at Granada. He has left in Spain a very great number of specimens of his genius, which display the boldness of his design, the facility of his pencil, the purity of his flesh-tints and his knowledge of chiaroscuro. He learned architecture from his father, Miguel Cano, painting from Pacheco and sculpture from Juan Martinez Montañes. As a statuary, his most famous works are the Madonna and Child in the church of Nebrissa, and the colossal figures of San Pedro and San Pablo. As an architect he indulged in too profuse ornamentation, and gave way too much to the fancies of his day. Philip IV. made him royal architect and king’s painter, and gave him the church preferment of a canon. His more important pictures are at Madrid. He was notorious for his ungovernable temper; and it is said that once he risked his life by committing the then capital offence of dashing to pieces the statue of a saint, when in a rage with the purchaser who grudged the price he demanded. His known passionateness also (according to another story) caused him to be suspected, and even tortured, for the murder of his wife, though all other circumstances pointed to his servant as the culprit.
CANO, MELCHIOR (1325–1560), Spanish theologian, born at Tarançon, in New Castile, joined the Dominican order at an early age at Salamanca, where in 1546 he succeeded to the theological chair in that university. A man of deep learning and originality, proud and a victim to the odium theologicum, he could brook no rivalry. The only one who at that time could compare with him was the gentle Bartolomeo de Caranza, also a Dominican and afterwards archbishop of Toledo. At the university the schools were divided between the partisans of the two professors; but Cano pursued his rival with relentless virulence, and took part in the condemnation for heresy of his brother-friar. The new society of the Jesuits, as being the forerunners of Antichrist, also met with his violent opposition; and he was not grateful to them when, after attending the council of Trent in 1545, he was sent, by their influence, in 1552, as bishop of the far-off see of the Canaries. His personal influence with Philip II. soon procured his recall, and he was made provincial of his order in Castile. In 1556 he wrote his famous Consultatio theologica, in which he advised the king to resist the temporal encroachments of the papacy and, as absolute monarch, to defend his rights by bringing about a radical change in the administration of ecclesiastical revenues, thus making Spain less dependent on Rome. With this in his mind Paul IV. styled him “a son of perdition.” The reputation of Cano, however, rests on a posthumous work, De Locis theologicis (Salamanca, 1562), which stands to-day unrivalled in its own line. In this, a genuine work of the Renaissance, Cano endeavours to free dogmatic theology from the vain subtleties of the schools and, by clearing away the puerilities of the later scholastic theologians, to bring religion back to first principles; and, by giving rules, method, co-ordination and system, to build up a scientific treatment of theology. He died at Toledo on the 30th of September 1560. (E. Tn.)
CANOE (from Carib. canáoa, the West Indian name found in use by Columbus; the Fr. canot, boat, and Ger. Kahn, are derived from the Lat. canna, reed, vessel), a sort of general term for a boat sharp at both ends, originally designed for propulsion by one or more paddles (not oars) held without a fixed fulcrum, the paddler facing the bow. As the historical native name for certain types of boat used by savages, it is applied in such cases to those which, like other boats, are open within from end to end, and the modern “Canadian canoe” preserves this sense; but a more specific usage of the name is for such craft as differ essentially from open boats by being covered in with a deck, except for a “well” where the paddler sits. Modern developments are the cruising canoe, combining the use of paddle and sails, and the racing canoe, equipped with sails only.
The primitive canoes were light frames of wood over which skins (as in the Eskimo canoe) or the bark of trees (as in the North American lndians’ birch-bark canoe) were tightly stretched. The modern painted canvas canoe, built on Indian lines, was a natural development of this idea. The Indian also used, and the African still uses, the “dug-out,” made from a tree hollowed by fire after the manner of Robinson Crusoe. Many of these are of considerable size and carrying capacity; one in the New York Natural History Museum from Queen Charlotte’s Island is 63 ft. long, 8 ft. 3 in. wide, and 5 ft. deep, cut from a single log. The “war canoe” of paddling races is its modern successor. In the islands of the Pacific primitive canoes are wonderfully handled by the natives, who make long sea voyages in them, often stiffening them by attaching another hull (see Catamaran).
In the earlier part of the 19th century, what was known as a “canoe” in England was the short covered-in craft, with a “well” for the paddler to sit in, which was popularly used for short river practice; and this type still survives. But the sport of canoeing in any real sense dates from 1865, when John MacGregor (q.v.) designed the canoe “Rob Roy” for long journeys by water, using both double-bladed paddle and sails, yet light enough (about 70 ℔) to be carried over land. The general type of this canoe is built of oak with a cedar deck; the length is from
