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was brought to a high state ol perfection among the Greeks. The stones used by the ancient engraver were agates, with various strata, and are known as onyx stones, the different kinds of strata giving rise to special names. Alternate layers of black and white make the simple onyx; white and ruddy brown make sardonyx; and white and gray make chalcedony, etc. Frequently there are three different colored layers, or the ground may be obtained in one color, the figure in a second and wreaths or other ornaments in the third. Cameos have been used not only for ornaments, but for adorning cups, vases, etc., and cups were often worked out of a single stone, around which was engraved a series of figures. A vast number of ancient cameos have been preserved. One of the most celebrated is the Gonzaga cameo, a sardonyx of three strata, now in the imperial cabinet of St. Petersburg. It represents Nero and Agrippina One of the largest and most famous cameos is in the National Library at Paris, which represents Augustus and the princes of the house of Tiberius as they are being numbered among the gods. It contains 20 figures. Italian cameo-cutters introduced shell-cameos. Imitation cameos are made in glass of different colors, and are called pastes.

Cam'era is an Italian word meaning room, and is etymologically the same as the English word chamber. It has come to mean, however, only a portable dark box used by photographers. The front of this box is provided with a flange, into which is screwed a lens. The rear of the camera is made to receive either a ground-glass plate or a sensitive photographic plate, upon which the lens projects the picture which is to be photographed. In a typical camera the remaining four walls are made of folded leather and are called the bellows. This enables the operator to vary the distance between the lens in front and the plate in the rear. In recent times this typical camera has undergone many modifications. Some are made to fold up, some are made without bellows, some are made so small as to be carried in the pocket, while the spectro-scopist at times uses cameras made entirely of metal, and at other times he converts an entire room of his laboratory into a camera.

Cameron, Simon, an American senator, was born in Pennsylvania, March 8, 1799. He was elected to the United States senate in 1845, and acted with the Democratic party. After the repeal of the Missouri Compromise he allied himself with the Republican party, and was again elected to the senate. His name was proposed for president in the Republican convention of 1800, and under President Lincoln he became secretary of war. After two years he resigned and was appointed minister

to Russia. Again elected to the senate, he became chairman of the committee on foreign relations. In 1877 he resigned, and was succeeded by his son, J. Donald Cameron. He died June 26, 1889.

Cameroon. See Kamerun.

Camoens (kăm'Ô-ěns), Luiz de, the greatest poet of Portugal, was born at Lisbon in 1524. As a student at the University of Coimbra, he wrote one of his three comedies, and soon after fell in love with a lady of the court, in honor of whom he wrote many love sonnets. Her father, however, forbade their union, and Camoens went to fight the Moors in Morocco, losing his right eye by a chance splinter. Returning to Lisbon, he engaged in a quarrel with one of the king's servants, and was thrown into prison. But soon after he was allowed to proceed to Goa in Portuguese India, and was later banished to Macao because of a satire he wrote against the grasping habits of the Portuguese officers at Goa. While at Macao he wrote his chief poem, The Lusiads, named from the fabled hero Lusus, who, in company with Ulysses, is said to have visited Portugal, calling it Lusitania, and founded the city of Lisbon under the name of Ulyssi-polis. The poem relates how Vasco da Gama and the other Portuguese heroes sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and opened a new route to India. After an exile of 16 years, Camoens returned to Portugal, as poor as he had left it. The Lusiads were published and were brilliantly successful; but the unfortunate author died in a public hospital in 1580. The Portuguese regard his great poem as their national epic.

Campagna di Roma (cãm-pān'yă). See Rome.

Campania (kăm-pãn'êá) (Latin Cain-pus, a plain), a volcanic but otherwise attractive district in Italy lying inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the region of Naples, and covering an.area of 6,289 square miles, with a population, in 1900, estimated at 3,210,904. It was a province of ancient Italy, and today it embraces the districts of Caserto, Benevento, Napoli, Avellino and Salerno, extending from the region of the Volurno River on the north to the Gulf of Policastro on the south. The province, originally settled by people of Oscan race, was subsequently under Greek and Etruscan dominion, until it was overrun, in 340 B. C, by the Romans who called it Campania Felix (Happy Campania), in allusion to its great fertility and delightful climate and scenery, in spite of its ill-omened volcanic character and its stretches of sulphur fields. Mount Vesuvius, overlooking the beautiful Bay of Naples, is its most striking physica' feature; while anciently it embraced Her-culaneum and the gloomy Lake Avernus, the entrance, as the Romans averred, io