Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/249

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234
TREDEGAR—TREE-CREEPER

east of the point where the Via Caecilia diverges from the Via Salaria. It lies about 1 m. south-west of the modern Monteleone, and an amphitheatre and other remains are visible. In a dedication made there by the consul Mummius in 146 B.C. it is spoken of as a vicus, but when the praefecturae were abolished it became a municipium. The post station of Vicus Novus on the Via Salaria (mod. Osteria Li Massacci) belonged to its territory (see N. Persichetti in Römische Mitteilungen, 1898, p. 193). (5) Trebula Suffenas is generally placed 6 m. south of Reate (mod. Rieti) on the Via Quinctia, but is with considerable probability identified with Ciciliano, 10 m. east of Tivoli, 2030 ft. above sea-level, by O. Cuntz (Jahreshefte des oesterr. arch. Instituts, 1899, ii. 89), who combines the evidence of inscriptions and of the description in Martial (v. 71), with a new interpretation of the Itineraries. There are remains of an ancient road, with substructures in rough polygonal work ascending to it in zigzags.  (T. As.,) 


TREDEGAR, an urban district in the western parliamentary division of Monmouthshire, England, on the Sirhowy river, 24 m. north of Cardiff, on a joint line of the London & North-western and the Rhymney railways. Pop. (1901), 18,497. It stands at an elevation of about 1000 ft., and owes its existence to the establishment in the beginning of the 19th century of the works of the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company, which employ most of the large industrial population. The place gave the title of Baron Tredegar (c. 1859) to Sir Charles Morgan Robinson Morgan, Bart. (1792–1873), whose grandfather, Sir Charles Gould, Bart., married the heiress of John Morgan of Tredegar and changed his name to Morgan. He was M.P. for Brecknock in 1835–1847. He married a granddaughter of the 1st Lord Rodney. His son Godfrey (b. 1830), who succeeded to the barony, was created Viscount Tredegar in 1905; he had served in the Crimea and taken part in the famous Balaclava charge.


TREDGOLD, THOMAS (1788–1829), English engineer, was born at Brandon, near Durham, on the 22nd of August 1788, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a carpenter. In 1808 he went to Scotland, and after working there as a journeyman for five years, obtained employment in London with an architect. He began to practice as a civil engineer on his own account in 1823, but much of his time was devoted to the preparation of his engineering text-books, which gained a wide reputation. They included Elementary Principles of Carpentry (1820), almost the first book of its kind in English; Practical Treatise on the Strength of Cast Iron and other Metals (1824); Principles of Warming and Ventilating Public Buildings (1824); Practical Treatise on Railroads and Carriages (1825); and The Steam Engine (1827). He died in London on the 28th of January 1829.


TREE, SIR HERBERT BEERBOHM (1853–), English actor and manager, was born in London, on the 17th of December 1853, the son of Julius Beerbohm, a London merchant of German parentage; his half-brother, Max Beerbohm (b. 1872), became well known as a dramatic critic, a miscellaneous writer and caricaturist. Taking the stage name of Beerbohm Tree he made his first professional appearance in London in 1876. After some years of varied experience he made a striking success in 1884 as the curate in The Private Secretary, but he was making himself well known meanwhile in dramatic circles as an admirable actor in many roles. In September 1887 he became lessee and manager of the Haymarket theatre, London, where his representations of melodramatic “character” parts, as in Jim the Penman, The Red Lamp, and A Man’s Shadow, were highly successful. His varied talents as an actor were displayed, however, not only in a number of modern dramas, such as H. A. Jones’s Dancing Girl, but also in romantic parts such as Gringoire, and in the production of so essentially a literary play as Henley’s Beau Austin; and in classic parts his ability as a comedian was shown in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which he played Falstaff, and as a tragedian in Hamlet; his presentations of Shakespeare were notable too as carrying forward the methods of realistic staging inaugurated at the Lyceum under Irving. In 1897 Mr Tree moved to the new Her Majesty’s (afterwards His Majesty’s) theatre, opening with Gilbert Parker’s Seats of the Mighty; but his chief successes were in Stephen Phillips’s poetical dramas, and in his splendid revivals of Shakespeare (especially Richard II. and the Merchant of Venice). The magnificence of the mounting, the originality and research shown in the “business” of his productions, and his own versatility in so many different types of character, made his management memorable in the history of the London stage; and on the death of Sir Henry Irving he was generally recognized as the leader in his profession. His wife (Maud Holt), an accomplished actress, and their daughter Viola, were also prominently associated with him. In 1907 he took his company to Berlin at the invitation of the German emperor, and gave a selection from his repertoire with great success. In the same year he established a school of dramatic art, for the training of actors, in London; and in this and other ways he was prominent in forwarding the interests of the stage. He was knighted in 1909.


TREE (O. Eng. trēo, treow cf. Dan. trae, Swed. träd, tree, trä, timber; allied forms are found in Russ. drevo, Gr. δρῦς , oak, and δόρυ, spear, Welsh derw, Irish darog, oak, and Skr. dāru, wood), the term, applied in a wide sense, to all plants which grow with a permanent single woody stem or trunk of some height, branching out at some distance from the ground. There is a somewhat vague dividing line, in popular nomenclature, between “shrubs” and “trees,” the former term being usually applied to plants with several stems, of lower height, and bushy in growth. The various species to which the name “tree” can be given are treated under their individual titles, e.g. oak, ash, elm, &c.; the articles Fir and Pine treat of two large groups of conifers; general information is provided by the articles Plants and Gymnosperms; tree cultivation will be found under Forests and Forestry and Horticulture; and the various types of tree whose wood is useful for practical purposes under Timber. Apart from this general meaning of the word, the chief transferred use is that for a piece of wood used for various specific purposes, as a framework, bar, &c., such as the tree of a saddle, axle-tree, cross-tree, &c.


TREE-CREEPER, one of the smallest of British birds, and, regard being had to its requirements, one very generally distributed. It is the Certhia familiaris of ornithology, and is remarkable for the stiffened shafts of its long and pointed tail-feathers, aided by which, and by its comparatively large feet, it climbs the trunks or branches of trees, invariably proceeding upwards or outwards and generally in a spiral direction, as it seeks the small insects that are hidden in the bark and form its chief food. When in the course of its search it nears the end of a branch or the top of a trunk, it flits to another, always alighting lower down than the place it has left, and so continues its work. Inconspicuous in colour—for its upper plumage is mostly of various shades of brown mottled with white, buff and tawny, and beneath it is of a silvery white—the tree-creeper is far more common than the incurious suppose; but, attention once drawn to it, it can be frequently seen and at times heard, for though a shy singer its song is loud and sweet. The nest is neat, generally placed in a chink formed by a half-detached piece of bark, which secures it from observation, and a considerable mass of material is commonly used to stuff up the opening and give a sure foundation for the tiny cup, in which are laid from six to nine eggs of a translucent white, spotted or blotched with rust-colour.

The tree-creeper inhabits almost the whole of Europe as well as Algeria and has been traced across Asia to Japan. It is now recognized as an inhabitant of the greater part of North America, though for a time examples from that part of the world, which differed slightly in the tinge of the plumage, were accounted a distinct species (C. americana) and even those from Mexico and Guatemala (C. mexicana) have lately been referred to the same. It therefore occupies an area not exceeded in extent by that of many passerine birds and is one of the strongest witnesses to the close alliance of the so-called Nearctic and Palaearctic regions.

Allied to the tree-creeper, but without its lengthened and stiff tail-feathers, is the genus Tichodroma, the single member of which is the wall-creeper (T. muraria) of the Alps and some other mountainous parts of Europe and Asia. It is occasionally seen in Switzerland, fluttering like a big butterfly against the face of a rock conspicuous