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kaleidoscope
kaleidoscope , optical instrument that uses mirrors to produce changing symmetrical patterns. Invented by the Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster in 1816, the device is usually a hand-held tube, a few inches to as much as twelve feet in length, and looks like a small telescope. At one end of the...
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Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley , 1895-1975, American film director and choreographer, b. Los Angeles as William Berkeley Enos. He choreographed several Broadway revues before moving (1930) to Hollywood, where he achieved his greatest successes at Warner Bros. (1933-39). Berkeley became famous for staging elaborate ...
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John Roderigo Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos 1896-1970, American novelist, b. Chicago, grad. Harvard, 1916. He subsequently studied in Spain and served as a World War I ambulance driver in France and Italy. In his fiction, Dos Passos is said to have mingled the naturalism of Theodore Dreiser with the modernism of Ja...
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dog days
dog days name for the most sultry period of summer, from about July 3 to Aug. 11. Named in early times by observers in countries bordering the Mediterranean, the period was reckoned as extending from 20 days before to 20 days after the conjunction of Sirius (the dog star) and the sun. In the lati...
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Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic , republic (2005 est. pop. 8,950,000), 18,700 sq mi (48,442 sq km), West Indies, on the eastern two thirds of the island of Hispaniola . The capital and largest city is Santo Domingo .
Land and People
The land ranges from mountainous to gently rolling, with fertile riv...
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bark
bark or barque , sailing vessel with three masts, of which the mainmast and the foremast are square-rigged while the mizzenmast is fore-and-aft-rigged. Although the word was once used to mean any small boat, later barks were sometimes quite large (up to 6,000 tons). In addition to the standard t...
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budding
budding type of grafting in which a plant bud is inserted under the bark of the stock (usually not more than a year old). It is best done when the bark will peel easily and the buds are mature, as in spring, late summer, or early autumn. Budding is a standard means of propagating roses and most f...
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prairie dog
prairie dog short-tailed, ground-living rodent, genus Cynomys, of the squirrel family, closely related to the ground squirrels, chipmunks, and marmots. There are several species, found in the W United States and N Mexico. Prairie dogs, named for their barking cries, are 12 to 15 in. (30 to 36 c...
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dog
dog carnivorous, domesticated wolf ( Canis lupus familiaris ) of the family Canidae, to which the jackal and fox also belong. The family Canidae is sometimes referred to as the dog family, and its characteristics, e.g., long muzzle, large canine teeth, and long tail, as canine traits. However...
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cambium
cambium , thin layer of generative tissue lying between the bark and the wood of a stem, most active in woody plants. The cambium produces new layers of phloem on the outside and of xylem ( wood ) on the inside, thus increasing the diameter of the stem . In herbaceous plants the cambium is almost i...
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