Hwicce

The inhabitants of one of the subkingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England that coincided with the medieval diocese of Worcester, a territory that then encompassed present Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and southwest Warwickshire. The southern part had been wrested from the Britons by the West Saxons sometime after 577, and the northern part was probably settled by Anglian

Prince, Harold

The son of a New York stockbroker, Prince majored in English at the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 1948) and began his theatrical career as an apprentice and stage manager for the noted producer

Cape Town, The city site

The first settlement of Cape Town was situated between Table Mountain and Table Bay. It was bounded on the northwest by the ridges known as Lion's Head and Lion's Rump (later called Signal Hill), on the north by Table Bay, on the south by Devil's Peak, and on the east by marshlands and the sandy Cape Flats beyond. The nearest tillable land was on the lower eastern slopes of Devil's

Consolidated Rail Corporation

Byname  Conrail,   publicly owned American railroad company established by the federal government under the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 to take over six bankrupt northeastern railroads. Conrail commenced operations on April 1, 1976, with major portions of the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, Erie Lackawanna Railway Company, Lehigh & Hudson River Railway Company, Lehigh

Priestly Code

Also called  Priestly Source, or P,   biblical source that, according to the document hypothesis, is one of the four original sources of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). The priestly writings are so named because they emphasize the priestly tradition or interest, giving detailed explanations and descriptions of ritual laws and procedures.

Le Maistre, Antoine

Important figure in the Jansenist religious movement in France, a member of the Arnauld family (q.v.).

Polarization

Light waves are transverse: that is, the vibrating electric vector associated with each wave is perpendicular to the direction of propagation. A beam of unpolarized light consists of waves moving in the same direction

Integraph

Mathematical instrument for plotting the integral of a graphically defined function. Two such instruments were invented independently about 1880 by the British physicist Sir Charles Vernon Boys and the Lithuanian mathematician Bruno Abdank Abakanowicz and were later modified and improved by others. The integraph draws the graph of the integral as the user traces

Athamas

In Greek mythology, king of the prehistoric Minyans in the ancient Boeotian city of Orchomenus. His first wife was Nephele, a cloud goddess. But later Athamas became enamoured of Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, and neglected Nephele, who disappeared in anger. Athamas and Ino incurred the wrath of the goddess Hera because Ino had nursed the god Dionysus (q.v.). Athamas went mad

Ducetius

A Hellenized leader of the Siculi, an ancient people of Sicily, who for a short time welded the native communities of east Sicily into a powerful federation. He seized his opportunity during the confusion that followed the collapse of tyranny in Syracuse and other Sicilian states in 460. Enjoying the goodwill of the Syracusan democracy, he enlisted its help in driving

Toowoomba

City, southeastern Queensland, Australia, on the Great Dividing Range. The principal inland city in the state, Toowoomba is a rail and road junction, tourist resort, service centre for Darling Downs (a livestock, grain, and dairying region of about 3,500,000 acres [1,400,000 hectares]), and site of the Perseverence Creek Water Supply Scheme. The town's industries include engineering works,

Peru, Drainage

Distinctive drainage patterns dissect the Costa, Sierra, and Montaña. Of the more than 50 rivers that flow west from the Andes across the Costa, most are short (usually less than 200 miles long) and precipitous, with highly seasonal rates of flow. Most have a period of peak flow (usually during the December to March rainy season) followed by a long dry period; only the largest of