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SHELBYVILLE

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V24, Page 827 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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SHELBYVILLE  , a

city and the county-seat of Shelby county,
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Indiana, U.S.A., about 27 M . S.E. of
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Indianapolis, on the Big Blue
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river . Pop . (1890) 5451; (1900) 7169, including 326
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foreign-born; (1910) 9500 . It is served by the Cleveland,
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Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis and the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis
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railways, and by an interurban electric
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line . It has a public library, a hospital and a children's home . The city is a trading centre for the surrounding farming region; among its manufactures furniture is the most important . Shelbyville, named in honour of General Isaac Shelby of
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Kentucky, was platted in 1822, incorporated as a
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town in 185o, and chartered as a city in 186o . SHELD-DRAKE, or, as commonly spelt in its contracted form, SHELDRAKE, a word whose derivation 3 has been much 1
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Maimonides, however, regarded the
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Shekinah, like the memra and " the glory," as a distinct entity . 3 Isaac Shelby's letter describing the
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battle is printed in Theodore Roosevelt's Winning of the West, i . 341-344 . 3 Ray in 1674 (Engl .

Words, p . 76) gave it from the

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local " sheld (= particoloured), which, applied to animals, as a horse or a cat, still survives in East Anglia . This opinion is not only suitable but is, confirmed by the
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bird's Old Norsk name Skjoldungr, from Skjoldr, primarily a patch, and now commonly bestowed on a piebald horse, just as Skjalda (Cleasby's Icel . Dict., sub voce), from the same source, is a particoloured cow . But some scholars interpret Skjoldungr by the secondary meaning of Skjoldr, a shield, asserting that it refers to " the shield-like
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band across the breast " of the bird . If they be right the proper spelling of the
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English word would be " Shield-drake," as some indeed have it . A third suggested meaning, from the Old Norsk Skjol, shelter, is philologically to be rejected, but, if true, would refer to the bird's habit, described in the text, of breeding under cover.discussed, one of the most conspicuous birds of the
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duck tribe, Anatidae, called, however, in many parts of England the " Burrow-Duck" and in some districts by the almost obsolete name of " Bergander" (Du . Berg-eende, Ger . Bergente), a word used by Turner in 1544 . The sheldrake is the Anas tadorna4 of
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Linnaeus, and the Tadorna cornuta of
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modern
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ornithology, a bird somewhat larger and of more upright stature than an ordinary duck, having its
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bill, with a basal fleshy protuberance (whence the specific
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term cornuta), pale red, the head and upper neck very dark glossy green, and beneath that a broad white
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collar, succeeded by a still broader belt of bright
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bay extending from the upper back across the upper breast . The
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outer scapulars, the primaries, a median abdominal stripe, which dilates at the vent, and a bar at the tip of the
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middle tail-quills are black; the inner secondaries and the
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lower tail-coverts are grey; and the
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speculum or wing-spot is a rich bronzed-green . The rest of the plumage is pure white, and the legs are flesh-coloured .

There is little

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external difference between the sexes, the
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female being only somewhat smaller and less brightly coloured . The sheldrake frequents the sandy coasts of nearly the whole of
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Europe and North Africa, extending across
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Asia to India,
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China and
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Japan, generally keeping in pairs and sometimes penetrating to favourable inland localities . The
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nest is always made under cover, usually in a
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rabbit-hole among sandhills, and in the Frisian Islands the
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people supply this bird with artificial burrows, taking large toll of it in eggs and down . T. radjah of
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Australia, -Papuasia and the Moluccas almost equals the true sheldrake in its brightly contrasted plumage, but the head is white in both sexes .
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Barbary, south-eastern Europe, and Central Asia are inhabited by an allied
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species of more inland range and very different coloration, the T. casarca or Casarca rutila of ornithologists, the ruddy sheldrake of English authors—for it has several times strayed to the
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British Islands-and the " Brahminy Duck " of Anglo-Indians, who find it resorting in winter, whether by pairs or by thousands, to their inland waters . This species is of an almost
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uniform bay colour all over, except the
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quill-feathers of the wings and tail, and (in the male) a ring round the neck, which are black, while the wing-coverts are white and the speculum shines with green and
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purple; the bill and legs are dark-coloured.5 A species closely resembling the last, but with a grey head, C.
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cana, inhabits South Africa . In Australia occurs another species of more sombre colours, the C. tadornoides; and New Zealand is the home of another species, C. variegata, still less distinguished by bright hues . In the last two the plumage of the sexes differs not inconsiderably . Sheldrakes will, if attention be paid to their wants, breed freely in captivity,
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crossing if opportunity be given them with other species, and an incident therewith connected possesses an importance hardly to be overrated by the philosophical naturalist . In the Zoological Society's gardens in
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London in the spring of 1859 a male of T. cornuta mated with a female of C. cana, and, as will have been inferred from what has been before stated, these two species differ greatly in the colouring of their plumage . The young of their union, however, presented an appearance wholly unlike that of either parent, and an appearance which can hardly be said, as has been said (P.Z.S., 1859, p . 442), to he "a curious combination of the colours of the two." Both sexes of this hybrid have been admirably portrayed by J .

Wolf; and, strange to say, when these figures are compared with equally faithful portraits by the same master of the Australian and New Zealand species, C. tadornoides and C. variegata, it will at once be seen that the hybrids
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present an appearance almost midway 4 This is the Latinized form of the French Tadorne, first published by Belon (1555), a word on which Littr6 throws no
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light except to state that it has a
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southern variant Tardone . 5 Jerdon (B . India, iii . 793) tells of a
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Hindu belief that once upon a time two lovers were transformed into birds of this species, and that they or their descendants are condemned to pass the
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night on the opposite banks of a river, whence they unceasingly call to one another: 'Chakwa, shall I come?" " No, Chakwi." " Chakwi, shall I come ? " " No, Chakwa." As to how, in these circumstances, the
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race is perpetuated the legend is silent . between the two species last named—species which certainly had nothing to do with their production.' The genera Tadorna and Casarca, as shown by the tracheal characters and coloration, are most nearly related to Chenalopex, containing the bird so well known as the
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Egyptian goose, C. aegyptiaca, and an allied species, C. jubata, from South
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America . For the same reason the genus Plectropte+us, composed of the spur-winged geese of Africa, and perhaps the Australian Anseranas and the
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Indian and Ethiopian Sarcidiornis, also appear to belong to the same
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group, which should be reckoned rather to the Anatine than to the Anserine section of the Anatidae . (A .

End of Article: SHELBYVILLE
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ISAAC SHELBY (1750-1826)
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CHARLES MONROE SHELDON (1857- )

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