wings fastened on
with wax; was regarded as the inventor of the mechanic arts.

DAGHESTAN (529), a Russian province W. of the Caspian Sea, traversed
by spurs of the Caucasus Mountains; chief town Derbend.

DAGO, a marshy Russian island, N. of the Gulf of Riga, near the
entrance of the Gulf of Finland.

DAGOBERT I., king of the Franks, son of Clotaire II., reformed the
laws of the Franks; was the last of the Merovingian kings who knew how to
rule with a firm hand; the sovereign power as it passed from his hands
was seized by the mayor of the palace; _d_. 638.

DAGON, the national god of the Philistines, represented as half-man,
sometimes half-woman, and half-fish; appears to have been a symbol to his
worshippers of the fertilising power of nature, familiar to them in the
fruitfulness of the sea.

DAGUERREOTYPE, a process named after its inventor, Louis Daguerre, a
Frenchman, of producing pictures by means of the camera on a surface
sensitive to light and shade, and interesting as the first step in
photography.

DAHL, a Norwegian landscape-painter, born at Bergen; died professor
of Painting at Dresden (1788-1857).

DAHLGREN, JOHN ADOLPH, a U.S. naval officer and commander; invented
a small heavy gun named after him; commanded the blockading squadron at
Charleston (1809-1870).

DAHLMANN, FRIEDRICH CHRISTOPH, a German historian and politician,
born at Wismar; was in favour of constitutional government; wrote a
"History of Denmark," "Histories of the French Revolution and of the
English Revolution"; left an unfinished "History of Frederick the Great"
(1785-1860).

DAHN, FELIX, a German jurist, historian, novelist, and poet, born in
Hamburg; a man of versatile ability and extensive learning; became
professor of German jurisprudence at Koenigsberg; _b_. 1834.

DAHNA DESERT, the central division of the Arabian Desert.

DAHOMEY (150), a negro kingdom of undefined limits, and under French
protectorate, in W. Africa, N. of the Slave Coast; the religious rites of
the natives are sanguinary, they offer human victims in sacrifice; is an
agricultural country, yields palm-oil and gold dust, and once a great
centre of the slave-trade.

DAIRI, the Mikado's palace or his court, and sometimes the Mikado
himself.

DAKO`TA, NORTH and SOUTH (400), three times as large as
England, forming two States of the American Union; consist of prairie
land, and extend N. from Nebraska as far as Canada, traverse