try and sell its output in America and Europe. China also is proficient in the making of rugs, but these are much rarer than the others that have been treated. Consult Langton’s How to Know Oriental Rugs and Mumford’s Oriental Rugs.
Rum, a kind of spirit made by fermenting and distilling the skimmings from the sugar-pans, when sugar is made from cane-juice. Enough water is added to the skimmings to produce one gallon of rum to every ten gallons of the mixture. Molasses is sometimes mixed with the skimmings, and a poorer quality of rum is made from molasses alone. The color of rum is given after distillation by adding caramel or charred sugar. Rum improves with age, and a quantity of rum, known to be 140 years old, was sold in 1865 for $15 a bottle. The best rum comes from Jamaica.
Ruma′nia or Rouma′nia, an independent kingdom of southeastern Europe, composed of the two former principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. It was a part of Roman Dacia, and its people proudly claim to be Romans. It is bounded on the west and north by Austria, on the east by Russia and the Black Sea and on the south by Bulgaria, from which it is separated by the Danube. Its area is 50,720 square miles, and its population 6,865,739. The capital of Rumania is Bucharest in Wallachia (300,000), and the chief town of Moldavia is Jassy (80,000), not far from Pruth River. A remarkable feature in the agricultural system is the ownership of lands by the peasantry, which was introduced about 1864. The peasants had been robbed of their lands during long ages of feudal oppression, and at this time it was determined to restore a portion by permitting them to purchase small tracts by means of a loan from the government. The result was that in 1880 there were in Rumania nearly 500,000 holdings, averaging 10½ acres each, with the greater part of the debt discharged by the owners. In 1859 the two principalities elected Prince Couza as their ruler but in 1866 he was deposed and was succeeded by Prince Charles of Hohenzollern. In 1881 Prince Charles was invested with the kingly dignity as Carol I (q. v.), with the consent of the European powers, and since that time the Rumanians have practically freed themselves from both Russian and Turkish interference and have taken their place among independent nations. King Carol’s wife is the well-known Carmen Sylva of literature. See Samuelson’s Rumania and Miller’s The Balkans in The Story of the Nations Series.
Rume′lia or Roume′lia (Turkish Rum Ili, meaning Land of the Romans), an important portion of European Turkey, differing widely in area in different times, but most generally applied to the region between the Balkan Mountains and the Ægean Sea, corresponding to ancient Thrace and part of Macedonia.
Rum′ford, Count. See Thompson, Sir Benjamin.
Ru′minant, any cud-chewing animal. The animals belonging to this class are grass and herb-eating forms, as the cow, camel, deer, giraffe and sheep. Those living in a wild state are the favorite prey of large flesh-eating animals. In order to crop their food they must go into open, exposed places; but, as mastication is a long, tedious process, they retire to the shelter of concealed positions to ruminate or chew their food properly. The process of chewing the cud cannot be understood without considering the complex stomach of these animals. It consists of four compartments: the paunch, the reticulum or honeycomb bag, the manyplies and the true stomach. The food when first swallowed is in the form of a coarse pellet which pushes aside a fold in the wall of the oesophagus and goes into the paunch. There it is softened and passed into the reticulum, where it is moulded into pellets of convenient size, which are passed up the œsophagus into the mouth by a process the opposite of swallowing. Here they are carefully masticated and mixed with saliva and then swallowed again. The pellet is now smooth and fine; instead of pushing aside the fold in the wall of the oesophagus, it is guided by it into the third stomach or manyplies. This acts partly as a strainer through which the food passes into the fourth compartment or true stomach. Glands in the walls of this part secrete gastric juice and digestion is carried forward. The camels differ from other ruminants in having no third stomach.
Runeberg (ro͞o′ ne-ber′ y’), Johann Ludvig, the national poet of Finland and the greatest poet who has written in Swedish, was born at Jacobstad, Finland, Jan. 5, 1804. His beautiful epic idyl of The Elk-Hunters appeared in 1832, followed soon by Christmas Eve and Hanna. Others of his best works are King Fjalar and Ensign Stals’ Stories, the opening poem of which, Our Land, Our Land, has been chosen as the national song of Finland. His poems embody the deepest feelings of the dual people of Finland, of the Finns no less than of the descendants of the Swedish immigrants. Runeberg died at Borga, May 6, 1877. See E. W. Gosse’s Northern Studies.
Run′ner, a general name given to leafless branches sent out from the main body of the
Image: Stomach of sheep, (a) Œsophagus; (c) rumen or paunch; (f) abomasum or reed; (b) beginning of duodenum.
