wined into a knot (probably an olive branch with two shoots, adorned with
ribbons or garlands), for which, later, two serpents, with heads meeting at
the top, were substituted. The mythologists explained this by the story of
Hermes finding two serpents thus knotted together while fighting; he
separated them with his wand, which, crowned by the serpents, became the
symbol of the settlement of quarrels (Thucydides i. 53; Macrobius, _Sat._
i. 19; Hyginus, _Poet. Astron._ ii. 7). A pair of wings was sometimes
attached to the top of the staff, in token of the speed of Hermes as a
messenger. In historical times the caduceus was the attribute of Hermes as
the god of commerce and peace, and among the Greeks it was the distinctive
mark of heralds and ambassadors, whose persons it rendered inviolable. The
caduceus itself was not used by the Romans, but the derivative _caduceator_
occurs in the sense of a peace commissioner.

See L. Preller, "Der Hermesstab" in _Philologus_, i. (1846); O.A. Hoffmann,
_Hermes und Kerykeion_ (1890), who argues that Hermes is a male lunar
divinity and his staff the special attribute of Aphrodite-Astarte.

CADUCOUS (Lat. _caducus_), a botanical term for "falling early," as the
sepals of a poppy, before the petals expand.

CAECILIA. This name was given by Linnaeus to the blind, or nearly blind,
worm-like Batrachians which were formerly associated with the snakes and
are now classed as an order under the names of _Apoda, Peromela_ or
_Gymnophiona_. The type of the genus _Caecilia_ is _Caecilia tentaculata_,
a moderately slender species, not unlike a huge earth-worm, growing to 2
ft. in length with a diameter of three-quarters of an inch. It is one of
the largest species of the order. Other species of the same genus are very
slender in form, as for instance _Caecilia gracilis_, [v.04 p.0933] which
with a length of 21/4 ft. has a diameter of only a quarter of an inch. One of
the most remarkable characters of the genus _Caecilia_, which it shares
with about two-thirds of the known genera of the order, is the presence of
thin, cycloid, imbricate scales imbedded in the skin, a character only to
be detected by raising the epidermis near the dermal folds, which more or
less completely encircle the body. This feature, unique among living
Batrachians, is probably directly inherited from the scaly _Stegocephalia_,
a view which is further strengthened by the similarity of structure of
these scales in both groups,