200 acres) in 1871 was 4589, and in 1881 it was 4891,—that of the parliamentary borough (area 11,602 acres) in the same years being 11,493 and 14,101. Tamworth ceased to be a parliamentary borough in 1885.
Tamworth is situated near the old Roman Watling Street, and occupies the site of a fort which, from the beginning of the 8th century, was the chief royal residence in Mercia. The town, after being burnt by the Danes, was rebuilt and fortified by Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great. From the reign of Edward the Martyr to that of William Rufus it was a royal mint, and some of the coins struck at Tamworth are still in existence. The town was incorporated in the 3d year of Elizabeth, from whom it obtained the grant of a fair and the confirmation of various privileges bestowed by Edward III. The Elizabethan charter was superseded by one conferred by Charles II., which continued to be the governing charter of the town till the passing of the Municipal Act. The town, with occasional intermissions, returned members to parliament from the reign of Henry I. till 1885. Among its more distinguished representatives have been Thomas Guy and Sir Robert Peel.
TANAGER, a word adapted from the quasi-Latin Tanagra of Linnæus, which again is an adaptation, perhaps with a classical allusion, of Tangara, used by Brisson and Buffon, and said by Marcgrave (Hist. Rer. Nat. Brasiliæ, p. 214) to be the Brazilian name of certain birds found in that country. From them it has since been extended to a great many others mostly belonging to the southern portion of the New World, now recognized by ornithologists as forming a distinct Family of Oscines, and usually considered to be allied to the Fringillidæ, (cf. Finch, vol. ix. p. 191); but, as may be inferred from Prof. Parker’s remarks in the Zoological Transactions (x. pp. 252, 253, and 267), the Tanagridæ are a "feebler" form, and thereby bear out the opinion based on the examination of many types both of Birds and Mammals as to the lower morphological rank of the Neotropical Fauna as a whole (cf. Birds, vol. iii. p. 743).
The Tanagers are a group in which Mr Sclater has for many years interested himself, and his latest treatment of them is contained in the British Museum Catalogue (xi. pp. 49-307). Therein he admits the existence of 375 species, which he arranges in 59 genera, forming six Subfamilies, Procniatinæ, Euphoniinæ, Tanagrinæ, Lamprotinæ, Phœnicophilinæ, and Pitylinæ. These are of very unequal extent, for, while the first of them consists of but a single species, Procnias tersa,—the position of which may be for several reasons still open to doubt,—the third includes more than 200. Nearly all are birds of small size, the largest barely exceeding a Song- Thrush. Most of them are remarkable for their gaudy colouring, and this is especially the case in those forming the genus called by Mr Sclater, as by most other authors, Calliste, a term inadmissible through preoccupation, to which the name of Tanagra of right seems to belong, while that which he names Tanagra should probably be known as Thraupis. The whole Family is almost confined to the Neotropical Region, and there are several forms peculiar to the Antilles; but not a tenth of the species reach even southern Mexico, and not a dozen appear in the northern part of that country. Of the genus Pyranga, which has the most northern range of all, three if not four species are common summer immigrants to some part or other of the United States, and two of them, P. rubra and P. æstiva,—there known respectively as the Scarlet Tanager and the Summer Redbird,—reach even the Dominion of Canada, visiting as well, though accidentally, Bermuda. P. æstiva has a western representative, P. cooperi, which by some authors is not recognized as a distinct species. The males of all these are clad in glowing red, P. rubra having, however, the wings and tail black. The remaining species, P. ludoviciana, the males of which are mostly yellow and black, with the head only red, does not appear eastward of the Missouri plains, and has not so northerly a range. Another species, P. hepatica, has just shewn itself within the limits of the United States. In all these the females are plainly attired; but generally among the Tanagers, however bright may be their coloration, both sexes are nearly alike in plumage. Little has been recorded of the habits of the species of Central or South America, but those of the north have been as closely observed as the rather retiring nature of the birds renders possible, and it is known that insects, especially in the larval condition, and berries afford the greater part of their food. They have a pleasing song, and build a shallow nest, in which the eggs, generally 3 in number and of a greenish-blue marked with brown and purple, are laid.
On a whole the Tanagridæ may perhaps be considered to hold the same relation to the Fringillidæ as the Icteridæ do to the Sturnidæ and the Mniotiltidæ to the Sylviidæ or Turdidæ, in each case the purely New-World Family being the “feebler” type. (a. n.)
TANCRED (d. 1112), son of the marquis Odo the Good and Emma the sister of Robert Guiscard, one of the most famous heroes of the first crusade. See Crusades, vol. vi. p. 624 sq.
TANCRED, the last Norman king of Sicily, reigned 1189–1194. See Sicily, vol. xxii. p. 26.
TANGANYIKA, a lake in East Central Africa, called Msaga ("tempestuous") by the Wakawendi and Kimana by the Warungu. The meaning of the name Tanganyika is, according to Cameron, nothing more than "the mixing place." It is the longest freshwater lake in the world, being about 75 miles longer than Lake Michigan. Although the Arabs had long known of the existence of the lake, the first Europeans who discovered it were Speke and Burton in 1858. It has since been visited by Livingstone, Cameron, Stanley, Thomson, and Hore, who have all added to our knowledge of it. Tanganyika, which is situated some 600 miles as the crow flies from the east coast of Africa, extends from 3° 16ʹ S. lat. to 8° 48ʹ S. lat., and lies between 29° 10ʹ E. long, and 32° 30ʹ E. long. Its length is 420 miles, and its breadth varies from 10 to 50 miles. Its area is 12,650 square miles, and its altitude may be taken as 2700 feet above sea-level (Cameron, 2710; Stanley, 2770; Hore, 2750; Popelin, 2665). It has a coast-line of 900 miles in extent. Its greatest depth has not yet been determined, but Hore states that a 168-fathom rope often failed to reach the bottom. Tanganyika may be described as an enormous crevasse. It is bordered on all sides by hills and mountains, some of which rise to from 5000 to 10,000 feet above its waters. The scenery is marked by exceptional grandeur, and is well calculated to impress the traveller. Burton says:—
"It filled us with admiration, with wonder, and delight. Beyond the short foreground of rugged and precipitous hill-fold, down which the footpath painfully zigzags, a narrow plot of emerald green shelves gently towards a ribbon of glistening yellow sand, here bordered by sedgy rushes, there clear and cleanly cut by the breaking wavelets. Farther in front stretches an expanse of the lightest, softest blue, from 30 to 35 miles in breadth, and sprinkled by the east wind with crescents of snowy foam. It is bounded on the other side by tall and broken walls of purple hill, flecked and capped with pearly mist, or standing sharply pencilled against the azure sky. To the south lie high bluff headlands and capes; and as the eye dilates it falls on little outlying islets, speckling a sea horizon. Villages, cultivated lands, the frequent canoes of the fishermen, give a something of life, of variety, of movement to the scenery."
Tanganyika is fed by numerous rivers and streamlets which flow from the surrounding hills, the yearly rainfall being about 27 inches, but the rainy seasons vary extremely in different years, altering the surface area of the lake accordingly. Hore found that between March 1879 and August 1880 the waters had fallen 10 feet 4 12 inches, as marked by a water-gauge he had erected at Ujiji, and he also saw evident signs of the receding of the waters all round the shores of the lake—belts of dead timber and bleached rock. Some 120 rivers and streams flow into the lake; the most important river is the Malagarasi, near Ujiji. Just below the rapids its width is 500 feet, and the average depth 5 feet. For many years Tanganyika was a riddle to African explorers,—Livingstone, Baker, and others believing that it belonged to the Nile system, and that it was connected with the Albert Nyanza. That this theory is incorrect was proved when Livingstone and Stanley explored the north end of the lake in November 1871, finding no outlet. It was Cameron, in March 1874, who first solved the riddle, and found that the outlet of Tanganyika was the river Lukuga, at about the centre of the western shore of the lake, 5° 52ʹ 45ʺ S. lat. In 1876
