Chapter 26

COPPERHEADS, an American political epithet, applied by Union men during the Civil War to those men in the North who, deeming it impossible to conquer the Confederacy, were earnestly in favour of peace and therefore opposed to the war policy of the president and of Congress. Such men were not necessarily friends of the Confederate cause. The term originated in the autumn of 1862, and its use quickly spread throughout the North. In the Western states early in 1863 the terms "Copperhead" and "Democrat" had become practically synonymous. The name was adopted because of the fancied resemblance of the peace party to the venomous copperhead snake, and, though applied as a term of opprobrium, it was willingly assumed by those upon whom it was bestowed.

COPPERMINE, a river of Mackenzie district, Canada, about 475 m. long, rising in a small lake in approximately 110° 20' W. and 65° 50' N., and flowing south to Lake Gras and then north-westward to Coronation Gulf in the Arctic Ocean. Like Back's river, the only other large river of this part of Canada, it is unnavigable, being a succession of lakes and violent rapids. The country through which it flows is a mass of low hills and morasses. The river was discovered by Samuel Hearne in 1771, and was explored from Point Lake to the sea by Captain (afterwards Sir John) Franklin in 1821.

COPPER-PYRITES, or CHALCOPYRITE, a copper iron sulphide (CUFeS2), an important ore of copper. The name copper-pyrites is from the Ger. _Kupferkies_, which was used as far back as 1546 by G. Agricola; chalcopyrite (from [Greek: chalkos], "copper," and pyrites) was proposed by J. F. Henckel in his _Pyritologia, oder Kiess-Historie_ (1725). By the ancients copper-pyrites was included with other minerals under the term pyrites, though the copper-ore from Cyprus referred to by Aristotle as chalcites may possibly have been identical with this mineral.

Chalcopyrite crystallizes in the tetragonal system with inclined hemihedrism, but the form is so nearly cubic that it was not recognized as tetragonal until accurate measurements were made in 1822. Crystals are usually tetrahedral in aspect, owing to the large development of the sphenoid P {111}. The faces of this form are dull and striated, whilst the smaller faces of the complementary sphenoid P' {111} (fig. 1) are bright and smooth. The combination of these two forms produces a figure resembling an octahedron, the angle between P and P' being 70° 7½', corresponding to the angle 70° 32' of the regular octahedron. The other faces shown in fig. 1 are the basal pinacoid, a {001}, and two square pyramids, b {101} and c {201}. Crystals are usually twinned, and are often complex and difficult to decipher. There are three twin-laws, the twin-planes being (111), (101) and (110) respectively. Twinning according to the first law is effected by rotation about an axis normal to the sphenoidal face (111), the resulting form resembling the twins of blende and spinel. Twinning according to the second law can only be explained by reflection across the plane (101), not by rotation about an axis; chalcopyrite affords an excellent example of this comparatively rare type of symmetric twinning. Interpenetration twins (fig. 2) with (110) as twin-plane are of very rare occurrence.

Crystals have imperfect cleavages parallel to the eight faces of the pyramid c {201}. The fracture is conchoidal, and the material is brittle. Hardness 4; specific gravity 4.2. The colour is brass-yellow, and the lustre metallic; the streak, or colour of the powder, is greenish-black. The mineral is especially liable to surface alteration, tarnishing with beautiful iridescent colours; a blue colour usually predominates, owing probably to the alteration of the chalcopyrite to covellite (CuS). The massive and compact mineral frequently exhibits this iridescent tarnish, and is consequently known to miners as "peacock ore" or "peacock copper." The massive mineral sometimes occurs in mammillary and botryoidal forms with a smooth brassy surface, and is then known to Cornish miners as "blister-copper-ore."

Chalcopyrite or copper-pyrites may be readily distinguished from iron-pyrites (or pyrites), which it somewhat resembles in appearance, by its deeper colour and lower degree of hardness: the former is easily scratched by a knife, whilst the latter can only be scratched with difficulty or not at all. Chalcopyrite is decomposed by nitric acid with separation of sulphur and formation of a green solution; ammonia added in excess to this solution changes the green colour to deep blue and precipitates red ferric hydroxide.

The chemical formula CuFeS2 corresponds with the percentage composition Cu=34.5, Fe=30.5, S=35.0. Analyses usually, however, show the presence of more iron, owing to the intimate admixture of iron-pyrites. Traces of gold, silver, selenium or thallium are sometimes present, and the mineral is sometimes worked as an ore of gold or silver.

Chalcopyrite is of wide distribution and is the commonest of the ores of copper. It occurs in metalliferous veins, often in association with iron-pyrites, chalybite, blende, &c., and in Cornwall and Devon, where it is abundant, with cassiterite. The large deposits at Falun in Sweden occur with serpentine in gneiss, and those at Montecatini, near Volterra in the province of Pisa, serpentine and gabbro. At Rammelsberg in the Harz it forms a bed in argillaceous schist, and at Mansfield in Thuringia it occurs in the Kupferschiefer with ores of nickel and cobalt. Extensive deposits are mined in the United States, particularly at Butte in Montana, and in Namaqualand, South Africa. Well-crystallized specimens are met with at many localities; for example, formerly at Wheal Towan (hence the name towanite, which has been applied to the species) in the St Agnes district of Cornwall, at Freiberg in Saxony, and Joplin, Missouri. (L. J. S.)

COPPICE, or COPSE (from an O. Fr. _copeis_ or _coupeis_, from Late Lat. _colpare_, to cut with a blow; _colpas_, the Late Lat. for "blow," is a shortened form of _colapus_ or _colaphus_, adapted from the Gr. [Greek: kolaphos]), a small plantation or thicket of planted or self-sown trees, which are cut periodically for use or sale, before the trees grow into large timber. Whether naturally or artificially grown the produce is looked on by the English law as _fructus industrialis_. The tenant for life or years may appropriate this produce (see _Dashwood_ v. _Magniac_, 1891, 3 Ch. 306).

COPRA (a Spanish and Portuguese adaptation of the Malay _kopperah_, and Hindustani _khopra_, the coco-nut), the dried broken kernel of the coco-nut from which coco-nut oil is extracted by boiling and pressing. Copra is the form in which the product of the coco-nut is exported for commercial purposes (see COCONUT PALM).

COPROLITES (from Gr. [Greek: kopros], dung, and [Greek: lithos], stone), the fossilized excrements of extinct animals. The discovery of their true nature was made by Dr William Buckland, who observed that certain convoluted bodies occurring in the Lias of Gloucestershire had the form which would have been produced by their passage in the soft state through the intestines of reptiles or fishes. These bodies had long been known as "fossil fir cones" and "bezoar stones." Buckland's conjecture that they were of faecal origin, and similar to the _album grecum_ or excrement of hyaenas, was confirmed by Dr W. Prout, who on analysis found they consisted essentially of calcium phosphate and carbonate, and not infrequently contained fragments of unaltered bone. The name "coprolites" was accordingly given to them by Buckland, who subsequently expressed his belief that they might be found useful in agriculture on account of the calcium phosphate they contained. The Liassic coprolites are described by Buckland as resembling oblong pebbles, or kidney-potatoes; they are mostly 2 to 4 in. long, and from 1 to 2 in. in diameter, but those of the larger ichthyosauri are of much greater dimensions. In colour they vary from ash-grey to black, and their fracture is conchoidal. Internally they are found to consist of a lamina twisted upon itself, and externally they generally exhibit a tortuous structure, produced, before the cloaca was reached, by the spiral valve of a compressed small intestine (as in skates, sharks and dog-fishes); the surface shows also vascular impressions and corrugations due to the same cause. Often the bones, teeth and scales of fishes are to be found dispersed through the coprolites, and sometimes the bones of small ichthyosauri, which were apparently a prey to the larger marine saurians. Coprolites have been found at Lyme Regis, enclosed by the ribs of ichthyosauri, and in the remains of several species of fish; also in the abdominal cavities of a species of fossil fish, _Macropoma Mantelli_, from the chalk of Lewes. Professor T. Jäger has described coprolites from the alum-slate of Gaildorf in Württemberg; the fish-coprolites of Burdiehouse and of Newcastle-under-Lyme are of Carboniferous age. The so-called "beetle-stones" of the coal-formation of Newhaven, near Leith, which have mostly a coprolite nucleus, have been applied to various ornamental purposes by lapidaries. The name "cololites" (from the Greek [Greek: kôlon], the large intestine, [Greek: lithos], stone) was given by Agassiz to fossil wormlike bodies, found in the lithographic slate of Solenhofen, which he determined to be either the petrified intestines or contents of the intestines of fishes. The bone-bed of Axmouth in Devonshire and Westbury and Aust in Gloucestershire, in the Penarth or Rhaetic series of strata, contains the scales, teeth and bones of saurians and fishes, together with abundance of coprolites; but neither there nor at Lyme Regis is there a sufficient quantity of phosphatic material to render the working of it for agricultural purposes remunerative.

The term coprolites has been made to include all kinds of phosphatic nodules employed as manures, such, for example, as those obtained from the Coralline and the Red Crag of Suffolk. At the base of the Red Crag in that county is a bed, 3 to 18 in. thick, containing rolled fossil bones, cetacean and fish teeth, and shells of the Crag period, with nodules or pebbles of phosphatic matter derived from the London Clay, and often investing fossils from that formation. These are distinguishable from the grey Chalk coprolites by their brownish ferruginous colour and smooth appearance. When ground they give a yellowish-red powder. These nodules were at first taken by Professor J. S. Henslow for coprolites; they were afterwards termed by Buckland "pseudo-coprolites." "The nodules, having been imbued with phosphatic matter from their matrix in the London Clay, were dislodged," says Buckland, "by the waters of the seas of the first period, and accumulated by myriads at the bottom of those shallow seas where is now the coast of Suffolk. Here they were long rolled together with the bones of large mammalia, fishes, and with the shells of molluscous creatures that lived in shells. From the bottom of this sea they have been raised to form the dry lands along the shores of Suffolk, whence they are now extracted as articles of commercial value, being ground to powder in the mills of Mr [afterwards Sir John] Lawes, at Deptford, to supply our farms with a valuable substitute for guano, under the accepted name of coprolite manure." The phosphatic nodules occurring throughout the Red Crag of Suffolk are regarded as derived from the Coralline Crag. The Suffolk beds have been worked since 1846; and immense quantities of coprolite have also been obtained from Essex, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. The Cambridgeshire coprolites are believed to be derived from deposits of Gault age; they are obtained by washing from a stratum about a foot thick, resting on the Gault, at the base of the Chalk Marl, and probably homotaxeous with the Chloritic Marl. An acre used to yield on an average 300 tons of phosphatic nodules, value £750. About £140 per acre was paid for the lease of the land, which after two years was restored to its owners re-soiled and levelled. Plicatulae have been found attached to these coprolites, showing that they were already hard bodies when lying at the bottom of the Chalk ocean. The Cambridgeshire coprolites are either amorphous or finger-shaped; the coprolites from the Greensand are of a black or dark-brown colour; while those from the Gault are greenish-white on the surface, brownish-black internally. Samples of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk coprolite have been found by A. Voelcker to give on analysis phosphoric acid equivalent to about 55 and 52.5% of tribasic calcium phosphate respectively (_Journ. R. Agric. Soc. Eng._, 1860, xxi. 358). The following analysis of a saurio-coprolite from Lyme Regis is given by T. J. Herapath (ibid. xii. 91):--

Water 3.976 Organic matter 2.001 Calcium sulphate 2.026 Calcium carbonate 28.121 Calcium fluoride not determined Calcium and magnesium phosphate 53.996 Magnesium carbonate 0.423 Aluminic phosphate 1.276 Ferric phosphate 6.182 Silica 0.773 ------ 98.734

An ichthyo-coprolite from Tenby was found to contain 15.4% of phosphoric anhydride. The pseudo-coprolites of the Suffolk Crag have been estimated by Herapath to be as rich in phosphates as the true ichthyo-coprolites and saurio-coprolites of other formations, the proportion of P2O5 contained varying between 12.5 and 37.25%, the average proportion, however, being 32 or 33%.

Coprolite is reduced to powder by powerful mills of peculiar construction, furnished with granite and buhrstones, before being treated with concentrated sulphuric acid. The acid renders it available as a manure by converting the calcium phosphate, Ca3P2O8, that it contains into the soluble monocalcium salt, CaH4P2O8, or "superphosphate." The phosphate thus produced forms an efficacious turnip manure, and is quite equal in value to that produced from any other source. The Chloritic Marl in the Wealden district furnishes much phosphatic material, which has been extensively worked at Froyle. In the vicinity of Farnham it contains a bed of "coprolites" of considerable extent and 2 to 15 ft. in thickness. Specimens of these from the Dippen Hall pits, analysed by Messrs J. M. Paine and J. T. Way, showed the presence of phosphates equivalent to 55.96 of bone-earth (_Journ. R. Agric. Soc. Eng._ ix. 56). Phosphatic nodules occur also in the Chloritic Marl of the Isle of Wight and Dorsetshire, and at Wroughton, near Swindon. They are found in the Lower Greensand, or Upper Neocomian series, in the Atherfield Clay at Stopham, near Pulborough; occasionally at the junction of the Hythe and Sandgate beds; and in the Folkeston beds, at Farnham. At Woburn, Leighton, Ampthill, Sandy, Upware, Wicken and Potton, near the base of Upper Neocomian iron-sands, there is a band between 6 in. and 2 ft. in thickness containing "coprolites"; these consist of phosphatized wood, bones, casts of shells, and shapeless lumps. The coprolitic stratum of the Speeton Clay, on the coast to the north of Flamborough Head, is included by Professor Judd with the Portland beds of that formation. In 1864 two phosphatic deposits, a limestone 3 ft. thick, with beds of calcium phosphate, and a shale of half that thickness, were discovered by Hope Jones in the neighbourhood of Cwmgynen, about 16 m. from Oswestry. They are at a depth of about 12 ft., in slaty shale containing Llandeilo fossils and contemporaneous felspathic ash and scoriae. A specimen of the phosphatic limestone analysed by A. Voelcker yielded 34.92% tricalcium phosphate, a specimen of the shale 52.15% (_Report of Brit. Assoc._, 1865). Phosphatic beds, supposed to have had a coprolitic origin, are found in the Lower Silurian rocks of Canada.

See T. J. Herapath, _Chem. Gaz._, 1849, p. 449; W. Buckland, _Geology and Mineralogy_ (4th ed., 1869); O. Fisher, _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, 1873, p. 52; J. J. H. Teall, _On the Potton and Wicken Phosphatic Deposits_ (Sedgwick Prize Essay for 1873) (1875) and "The Natural History of Phosphatic Deposits," _Proc. Geol. Assoc._ xvi. (1900); L. W. Collet, _Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin._ xxv. pt. 10, p. 862; T. G. Bonney, _Cambridgeshire Geology_ (1875); L. Gruner, _Bull. soc. géol. franc._ xxviii. (2nd series), p. 62; J. Martin, ibid. iii. (3rd series), p. 273.

COPTOS (Egyptian _Keft_, _Kebto_), the modern KUFT (a village with railway station a short distance from the west bank of the Nile about 25 m. north-east of Thebes), an ancient city, capital of the fifth nome of Upper Egypt, and the starting-point of several roads to the Red Sea, of which that which passes along the valley running due east to Kosseir past the ancient quarries of Hamm[=a]m[=a]t was the most frequented, until the foundation of Berenice (q.v.) by Ptolemy Philadelphus made an even more important line of traffic to the south-west. The growth of trade with Arabia and India thereafter raised Coptos to great commercial prosperity; but in A.D. 292 its share in the rebellion against Diocletian led to an almost total devastation. It again appears, however, as a place of importance, and as the seat of a considerable Christian community, though the stream of traffic turned aside to the neighbouring K[=u]s. During part of the 7th century it was called Justinianopolis in honour of the emperor Justinian.

The local god of Coptos, as of Khemmis (Akhm[=i]m, q.v.), was the ithyphallic Min; but in late times Isis was of equal importance in the city. Min was especially the god of the desert routes. Petrie's excavations on the site of the temple brought to light remains of all periods, the most remarkable objects being three very primitive limestone statues of the god with figures of an elephant, swords of sword-fish, sea-shells, &c., engraved upon them: there were also found some very peculiar terra-cottas of the Old Kingdom, and the decree of an Antef belonging to the latter part of the Middle Kingdom, deposing the monarch for siding with the king's enemy.

COPTS, the early native Christians of Egypt and their successors of the Monophysite sect, now racially the purest representatives of the ancient Egyptians. The name is a Europeanized form, dating perhaps from the 14th century, of the Arabic Kibt (or Kubt), which, in turn, is derived from the Greek [Greek: Aiguptioi], "Egyptians" (the Copts in the Coptic language likewise style themselves [grahic], "people of Egypt," "Egyptians").

The limited application of the name is explained by the circumstances of the time when Mahomet sent forth his challenge to the world and 'Amr conquered Egypt (A.D. 627-641). At that time the population of Egypt was wholly Christian (except for a sprinkling of Jews, &c.), divided into two fiercely hostile sects, the Monophysites and the Melkites. The division was in great measure racial. The Melkites, adherents of the orthodox or court religion sanctioned by the council of Chalcedon, were mainly of foreign extraction, from the various Hellenistic races which peopled the Eastern Roman empire, while the bulk of the population, the true Egyptians, were Monophysite. Amongst the latter political aspirations, apart from religion, may be said not to have existed. It has generally been held that the Copts invited and aided the Moslems to seize the country in order that at all costs they might be freed from the yoke of the state religion imposed by the Eastern Roman Empire; but Dr A. J. Butler has shown this view to be untenable, while admitting that the religious feuds of the Christians made the task of the Arabs easy. The mysterious Mukaukis, who treacherously handed over Alexandria, impregnable as it was for Arab warriors, and then capitulated, was none other than Cyrus, the Melkite patriarch and governor of Egypt; the native Monophysite party, however, smarting under the persecution of the Emperor Heraclius, seemed to have most to gain by a change of masters. The prophet Mahomet himself had prescribed indulgence to the Copts before his death, and 'Amr was mercifully disposed to them. Although they offered resistance in some places, after the Roman forces had been destroyed or had abandoned Egypt they generally acquiesced in the inevitable; and when in 646 a Roman fleet and army recaptured Alexandria and harried the Delta, the Copts helped the Moslems to cast out the Christian invaders. Some of the Copts embraced Islam at once, but as yet they formed practically a solid Christian nation under the protection of the conquering Arabs, and the religious and political distinction between the "true believers" and the Christians was so sharp that a native Christian turning Moslem was no longer a Copt, i.e. Egyptian; he practically changed his nationality.

The beginnings of Christianity in Egypt are obscure; the existence of it among the natives (as opposed to the mixed "Greek" population of Egypt and Alexandria which produced so many leading figures and originated leading doctrines in the early church) can be traced back as far as the Decian persecution (A.D. 249-251) in the purely Egyptian names of several martyrs. St Anthony (c. A.D. 270) was a Copt; so also was Pachomius, the founder of Egyptian monasticism at the beginning of the 4th century. The scriptures were translated into Coptic not later than the 4th century. A religion founded on morality and with a clear doctrine of life after death was especially congenial to the Egyptians; thus the lower orders in the country embraced Christianity fervently, while the Alexandrian pagans were lost in philosophical speculation and Neoplatonism was spread amongst the rich "Greek" landowners; these last, partly out of religious enthusiasm, partly from greed, annoyed and oppressed their Christian peasantry. Egypt was then terribly impoverished; the upper country was constantly overrun by raiders from Nubia and the desert; and the authority of the imperial government was too weak to interfere actively on behalf of the Christians. The monasteries, however, were refuges that could bid defiance to the most powerful of the pagan aristocracy as well as to barbarian hordes, and became centres of united action that, at the summons of Shenoute, the organizer of the national church, swept away the idols of the oppressors in riot and bloodshed. In the course of the 5th century the Christians reached a position in which they were able to treat the pagans mercifully as a feeble remnant.