CENSUS
359 CENTRAL AFRICA PROTECTORATE
the story Shelley founded his tragedy of The Cenci. Researches have shown that Francesco was not so bad as he has been painted, that Beatrice was not so beautiful and virtuous as she has been pictured and, lastly, that the sweet and mournful face that forms one of the treasures of the Barberini Palace at Rome cannot, as was thought, be a portrait of Beatrice by Guido, who never painted in Rome until nine years after Beatrice was executed
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Cen'sus, meaning the counting of the people. The word is a Latin one and was first applied to the duty of counting the people, which was intrusted to the Roman censors. Solon also established a census in Athens. The first careful census of a European nation was undertaken by Sweden in 1749. A count was made in France in 1700, but the first reliable one was not undertaken until 1801. In America the first census was taken in 1790; in England in 1801. Censuses are now taken in the United States, England, India, most of the British colonies, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Russia and Switzerland every ten years; in France and Germany every five years; in Spain irregularly. Hardly any two countries agree as to the subjects on which information is asked. Thus, some inquire whether there are in households infirm persons, blind, deaf and dumb, idiots, insane persons, persons who have been convicted of a crime; how many languages are spoken by the persons entered; how many are at school, how many vote, how many rooms and windows are in the house, and so on. Without being too inquisitorial, the design of the census-returns should at least afford information not only as to the vital statistics of a country or nation but as to its industrial and economic resources, including the extent and character of its chief industries, manufactures, mines, if any, and the growth and nature of its agricultural products. The United States census is the most important of any, as the representation of the states in the lower house depends upon it. It was provided for in the constitution. It aims at giving a specially full view of the condition of the people, and is illustrated with maps on almost all the many branches of inquiry, such as the amount of land occupied by different crops and where various diseases prevail, as well as the indicated scope, extent and 'nature of its manufacturing interests, its mining resources, etc. The thirteenth (1910) census gives the United States a total population, including Alaska and the territories, of 93,402,151. The census of 1900, embraced in a series of ten volumes, devotes two to population, two to other vital statistics, two to manufactures. The census-bureau, organized as a permanent one in igoa, is tinder the
Department of Commerce and Labor, and its periodic bulletins are of the utmost value.
Centaurs (sen'tars) (meaning bull-kil-ers), a wild race of men, who lived in early times in the forests of Thessaly and spent their time in bull-hunting. Homer first tells about them, picturing them as savage, gigantic in stature and covered with hair. It was not until the time of the poet Pindar that they are spoken of as half-man and half-horse. In Greek myths these horse-centaurs are described as fighting with a people called the Lapithse and with Hercules. The most famous was Chiron, who was the teacher of Achilles. When the Mexicans, who had never seen horses, first set eyes on the Spaniards on horseback, they believed that the horse and man together made one animal, or a centaur, as the Greeks would call it.
Centigrade Scale. See CELSIUS.
Centiped (sen'ti-ped), the common hundred-legged worm of warm regions. The body is divided into a number of similar joints, and each joint is provided with a pair of legs, of which there are from 21 to 23. The enlarged front joint is the head, with eyes, jaws and long many-jointed feelers. Although resembling worms in form, they are really more closely related
CENTIPED
to insects. They resemble the larval stages of the latter in external and internal structure, having jointed appendages, antennae or feelers, and breathing by air-tubes. These traits are not possessed by worms, but by insects, spiders, etc. The centipeds proper represent one group (Scolopendra) of a larger subclass called Myriopoda. The largest centipeds, from nine inches to one foot long, live in the East Indies, but one in South America attains nearly equal size. Their fore feet are modified into poison-claws, and their bite is fatal to small animals and dangerous to man. The centipeds are to be distinguished from the millepeds which are common in the United States and Europe, but a few centipeds are found within the borders of the southern states, the largest of which is five and one-half inches long. The centipeds live on insects and small animals, the millepeds mainly on decaying wood. The latter are harmless.
Central Africa Protectorate, The, contains 40,980 square miles, with a population of 750 Europeans and nearly a mik lion natives. The chief settlement is Blan-tyre, in the Shire" Highlands, with, about
