changes in the nerves are of a degenerative character, and quite similar to those found in neuritis (q.v.) from alcohol or other poisons. TOXIN AND ANTITOXIN. The diphtheria toxin has been isolated by Roux, Yersin, Brieger, Fraenkel, and others, by filtration of cultures of the living bacilli through porous porcelain. It appears to be analogous to the poisons of certain venomous serpents. Behring (q.v.) announced his discovery of diphtheria antitoxin in 1890. He, Fraenkel, Wernicke, Aronson, Roux, and others succeeded in rendering animals immune to diphtheria by the use of inoculations of virulent or somewhat attenuated cultures of diphtheria toxin. W. H. Park, of New York, says (in Twentieth Century Practice): "The most important and valuable results are those which have been obtained by Behring, in conjunction with others, who showed that the blood of immune animals contains a substance which neutralizes the diphtheria toxin. The blood serum of persons who have recovered from diphtheria has also been found to possess this protective property, which it acquires about a week after the beginning of the disease, and loses again in a few months." To obtain antitoxin for therapeutic purposes, strong toxin obtained from virulent cultures of the Klebs-Löffler bacillus is injected into the bodies of young, healthy horses. At the end of two months, during which time increasing doses of the toxin have been given, blood is drawn from the horses and tested for antitoxin. That having sufficiently strong antitoxin is retained and the process of inoculating and of withdrawing serum is repeated for years, allowing three months of each year as an interval of freedom from inoculations. The serum obtained is sterilized by the addition of carbolic acid by some who prepare it, but Park considers the addition of any antiseptic as unnecessary and inadvisable. The antitoxic serum is used hypodermically as early as a diagnosis of diphtheria has been made, in dosage of from 600 to 2000 units, a unit being equivalent to one cubic centimeter of 'normal serum'; i.e. of blood serum of an immunized animal, which was made so efficacious that 0.1 cubic centimeter antagonizes ten times the minimum of diphtheria poison fatal to a guinea-pig weighing 300 grams, or about ten ounces (Jacobi, Twentieth Century Practice, vol. xvii., New York, 1900). See the article ANTITOXIN; BACTERIA; IMMU. NITY; and SERUM THERAPY, and the various authorities referred to thereunder.

DIPHTHERIA (IN FOWLS). See ROUP. DIPHTHERIA (IN PIGS). See SWINE

PLAGUE.

DIPHTHONG (Lat. diphthongus, Gk. dipGoryos, diphthongos, diphthong, from ô-, di-, double + pooyyos, phthongos, sound, from 00éɣyeodai, phthengesthai, to utter). A term used to denote two vowel sounds following one another so closely as to form but one syllable, as in out. In this combination the sound is really composed of an a as heard in father, and a u as heard in put. The spelling of the English has little or no relation to the pronunciation in this matter. many syllables written with two vowels, only one sound is heard, as in bread. The single Vowel letters, again, often represent a diphthongal sound; thus, the long sound of i, as it is called, is really composed of the sound of a as heard in father and that of e in me; and tune

In

DIPLOMA.

is pronounced as if written teun, or rather tyun. In such words as bread, field, the vowels, which are now monophthongs, were at one time real diphthongs, and are still so pronounced in many parts of England; on the other hand, many diphthongs in modern English are developed from original simple vowel sounds, or monophthongs; thus the ou in mouse is derived from the u of old English mus.

DIP'LOCOC'CUS. See BACTERIA.

DIPLOD'OCUS (Neo-Lat., from Gk. dλbos, diploos, double + doxos, dokos, beam). A gigantic fossil reptile of the order Dinosauria, suborder Sauropoda, found in the Jurassic rocks of western North America. Its body was long and low, its head remarkably small, its neck very long, trunk short and deep, and the tail was very long and quite thick at the base. The legs were strongly built and of almost equal length, indicating quadrupedal locomotion, and the feet were armed with heavy claws. The skull was high and laterally compressed posteriorly, with a long sloping face, and with large orbits situated far back on the sides. The jaws had weak, slender, spreading teeth only in their anterior portions, all the premolars and molars being absent. The vertebræ of Diplodocus are of great interest because of the elaborate systems of plates and buttresses that give support to the vertebral processes and thus lend great strength without much increase of weight. The animal appears to have been herbivorous, and was probably aquatic, living in the extensive marshes and swamps of the Jurassic seas and lowlands that probably resembled those of the modern Amazon and Congo basins. Some figures, based upon the skeleton mounted in the Carnegie Museum at Pittsburg, express more clearly the immense proportions of this ancient reptile. The total length, from tip of nose to tip of tail, was about 60 feet, and its height was nearly 12 feet. The head was 2 feet long, only one-thirtieth of the length of the body, and the neck 20 feet in length. The trunk, from the point of the shoulder-blade to the middle of the sacrum, measured 13 feet, and had a depth of 7 to 8 feet, and the tail was at least 25 feet long. The animal is estimated to have weighed, when alive, about twenty tons, and to have required a daily meal of at least 500 pounds of vegetable food such as the twigs, leaves, and succulent stems of plants that grew in the waters of its habitat. Consult: Hatcher, "Diplodocus, Marsh, Its Osteology, Taxonomy, and Probable Habits," Memoirs of the Carnegie Museum, vol. i., No. 1 (Pittsburg, 1901); Lucas, Animals of the Past (New York, 1901). See DINOSAURIA. DIP'LODUS. See PLEURACANTHUS. DIP'LOGRAP/TUS. See GRAPTOLITE.

DIPLOMA (Lat., from Gk. dinλwμa, folded paper, letter of recommendation, from din Noos, diploos, double). A term used by the ancients especially to indicate letters of license received from the Government. It originated in the custom of writing such documents on two tablets of wax which were doubled, or on writing material which was folded. Subsequently the term was applied to all old imperial and ecclesiastical acts and grants, public treaties, deeds, letters, wills, and all similar instruments that were drawn up in a formal manner and marked with a seal or other peculiarities for identification. The term

is now restricted, for the most part, to instruments given by universities, colleges, and other learned societies in proof of the holder's having attained a certain degree; or to the licenses held by professional persons as an essential qualification to the practice of their art. While the old legal significance of such diplomas has largely lost its force, they are yet required by the public as a protection from imposture and as an indication of some qualification in the art professed. In the United States there is a decided tendency toward bringing all such diploma-conferring bodies under the supervision and control of the State, thus putting them upon much the same plane that they occupy in Continental Europe. See CHARTERS; COLLEGES, AMERICAN; DEGREE; PALEOGRAPHY; UNIVERSITY.

DIPLOMACY. In the wider sense, the art or science of foreign politics. The term is, however, more commonly employed in the more restricted meaning of the art of managing the intercourse and adjusting the relations of States to one another by negotiation. Used in this sense, the word is of modern origin, dating back only to the latter part of the eighteenth century. The art and the processes connoted by the term, however, are as old as international relations, and cover the whole field of such relations, whether strictly political or not. The principal objects of diplomacy have always been the same-to preserve the independence and safeguard the security of the State, or to secure some coveted political advantage over other States. Subsidiary to these principal objects have been the more immediate purposes of preserving certain political arrangements such as the European balance of power' -intended to prevent the aggrandizement of certain States at the expense of others, the prevention of general wars, and the securing of commercial advantages to the subjects of trading nations. Under settled political conditions, such as now exist in Europe and in North America, the commercial purposes of diplomacy tend to become more prominent than those of a purely political character, though the latter never lose their supreme importance, and are never far in the background of international intercourse.

The methods of diplomatic action vary according to the magnitude of the interests involved and the nature of the emergency which calls them into play. For the settlement of questions vitally affecting several States, or such as involve the peace of a continent, or the general policy of the great powers of Christendom, a general congress or international conference may be summoned. Of this character was the Congress of Westphalia, held in 1648 to settle the issues involved in the Thirty Years' War; the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), by which the problems arising out of the Napoleonic wars, were adjusted; the Hague Conference (1899), for the promotion of the peaceful settlement of international differences among all civilized States; and the Conference of Algeciras (1906) for the settling of relations between European powers and Morocco.

Questions of less general importance, arising among two or more States, are more frequently settled by formal treaties, directly negotiated by the regular diplomatic representatives of the States affected, though these may also be considered and the conflicting claims of the parties adjusted by joint commissions appointed for the purpose. Where these claims cannot be so ad

justed by negotiation, resort may be had to a permanent tribunal of arbitration, like that established as the result of The Hague Conference above referred to, or to arbitrators agreed upon by the parties to the controversy. Matters of less importance, not requiring formal adjudication or the solemn sanction of a treaty, are commonly dealt with in informal conferences between the foreign offices of the States concerned, and these result in friendly understandings as to the policy to be pursued by them.

The management of the foreign intercourse of a nation is one of the chief functions of the executive head of the State. Formerly it was largely performed by the ruler in person, but it has in modern times passed into the hands of a class of officials known as diplomatic agents, though the most important of these, as ambassadors, are invested with an extraordinary degree of dignity, from the fact that they are supposed to represent the person of the sovereign, and not merely the foreign office of the State by which they are accredited. Under modern conditions, the usual instruments of diplomacy are: (1) The principal secretaries of State for foreign affairs; (2) regular diplomatic agents of various grades, ranging from ambassadors to chargés d'affaires; (3) occasional embassies or agents of diplomatic intercourse appointed for the accomplishment of a particular purpose. See DIPLOMATIC AGENTS.

Prior to the fifteenth century diplomatic intercourse was conducted almost entirely by ambassadors and other agents of the last-named class, and was as ineffective as its irregularity and lack of knowledge would lead us to expect. But with the establishment of resident legations in that century, the practice of diplomacy was raised to a fine art, which rapidly assumed commanding importance in European politics. At a period when international relations were based on personal and dynastic interests, and when statecraft was another name for intrigue, the rôle of the ambassador was second in importance only to that of the sovereign. Success in diplomacy turned largely upon the personal qualities of the ambassador, upon smooth and engaging manners cunning, and astuteness, and was thus a matter of personal influence. Being beyond the reach of instructions, he occupied a position of great independence and power. There was no diplomatic profession, but the great posts in the service were sought after by the greatest persons in Church and State. The institution by all the great powers of a trained diplomatic service in the last century, and the astonishing improvement in methods of communication, especially in the use of the telegraph, have greatly impaired the power and importance of ambassadors, and have tended more and more to reduce them to the position of mere intermediaries, acting under instructions from the governments which they represent.

It may be doubted whether diplomacy can fairly be held responsible for the dishonorable methods with which the term has come to be associated. If it has at times been characterized by intrigue and deception, by the absence of large views and generous motives, by selfishness, and a disposition to sacrifice the interests of the weaker to the stronger, it has in these respects only too accurately reflected the statesmanship of its time. And that statesmanship was for centuries based on the perfectly just supposition that 'Europe

DIPLOMACY.

was always in a state of war, overt or latent.' The gradual substitution of national for personal and dynastic interests, which the last century has witnessed, has at once given a more pacific character to international relations and a more straightforward and business-like tone to our diplomacy. Not that suspicion has entirely disappeared from the one, or deception from the other, but they have become the exception and not the rule.

The international relations of States with which diplomacy has to do are only those of a pacific character. With the outbreak of war diplomatic relations come to an end. The suspension of diplomatic intercourse is usually a preliminary to a declaration of war, though it is sometimes employed as a mild means of coercion of a weak State by a more powerful one. In such a case it may be regarded as a strong expression of displeasure, which may, if reparation be unduly delayed, result in the use of force.

The usage of the last three hundred years has resulted in the general adoption of French as the language of diplomatic intercourse in Europe. The recent tendency has been to confine this to oral intercourse, written instructions and other diplomatic dispatches being usually couched in the language of the Government employing and transmitting them.

The history of diplomacy is one of the most interesting and important chapters in the political history of nations. Its sources are to be found in treaties, in the correspondence of ministers of State and ambassadors, contained in the published and secret archives of States, and in the diaries and private correspondence of public officials and courtiers. For a further discussion see INTERNATIONAL LAW, and the authorities there referred to; also Moore, A Hundred Years of American Diplomacy (New York, 1900); id., History and Digest of International Arbitrations (Washington); id., The Old Diplomacy and the New (University of Virginia, 1899); id., American Diplomacy (New York, 1905); Hill, History of European Diplomacy (New York, 1905). DIPLOMACY. An adaptation from Sardou's Dora, made by Bolton and Savile Rowe, and produced in 1878.

DIPLOMATIC AGENTS. In the widest sense, all the officers to whom the intercourse of the State with foreign powers is committed. As thus employed, the expression would include the Foreign Minister, or Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and, in the United States, the Senate in the exercise of its constitutional function of approving treaties with foreign States, as well as the regular and occasional representatives of the Government abroad. More properly, however, it has reference only to the latter class of officials, who, under instructions from the home Government, carry on its intercourse with the powers to which they are accredited. Attention has been called in the article on DIPLOMACY to the fact that for many centuries the diplomatic intercourse of States was carried on by occasional embassies, appointed for a particular purpose, and that it was not until the fifteenth century that permanent and continuous diplomatic relations were instituted by the establishment of resident embassies. By far the greater part of the international intercourse of the modern world is conducted through these regular diplo

DIPLOMATIC AGENTS.

matic channels, though occasional embassies are still employed for special occasions, principally of a ceremonial character, and the Foreign Office, or Department of State, of one Government may, on occasion, communicate its views directly, by circular or otherwise, to the corresponding office of foreign States.

The

The transformation of diplomacy in the last century from the art of applying personal influence in the management of men, to the more prosaic and worthy art of managing the business of the State with foreign nations, has necessitated a corresponding change in the organization and character of the diplomatic service. personal qualities of shrewdness, a talent for intrigue, and smoothness of address, on which the old diplomacy was based, declined in importance, and made way for the knowledge of international law, of history, of the laws and conditions of trade, of men and affairs, which the new diplomacy required. Accordingly the management of diplomatic intercourse has in Europe generally passed from the men of exceptional gifts or exceptional influence, selected at random for the service, to a professional class of trained diplomatic servants. The comparative isolation of the United States hitherto, and the simplicity of her foreign relations, have delayed the adoption of this reform in her diplomatic service, but the new conditions resulting from the war with Spain and her recent extraordinary commercial expansion indicate that a similar change in the character and organization of her diplomatic service cannot be much longer delayed.

Formerly the term ambassador was applied to all accredited diplomatic agents, and it is sometimes still employed, interchangeably with minister, as a general term to describe such agents of whatever rank. But the title is now strictly appropriate of only one, and that the highest class of diplomatic representatives. The process of classification began before the close of the seventeenth century, but did not receive international recognition until the beginning of the last century. In 1815 the eight principal powers represented at the Congress of Vienna agreed upon a gradation of diplomatic agents, who were thenceforth to rank as follows: (1) Ambassadors, legates and nuncios of the Pope; (2) envoys, ministers, and others accredited to the sovereign; (3) chargés d'affaires accredited to the department of foreign affairs. At the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle a further distinction was made between ministers plenipotentiary, who were accorded the second place, and ministers resident, who became "an intermediate class between ministers of the second order and chargés d'affaires." As the rank of a foreign minister has nothing whatever to do with his power or with the facilities afforded him for transacting diplomatic business, or with the immunities enjoyed by him, but is a mere matter of precedence and the ceremony of courts, the United States long refused to recognize the classification of the European powers and accredited all of its principal diplomatic agents as ministers plenipotentiary, i.e. ministers of full power and authority. In 1893, however, the President was authorized by act of Congress to appoint ambassadors of full rank and of equal grade and dignity with those which should be accredited by foreign powers to this country. In accordance with this act

the United States is now represented by ambassadors at the courts of England, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, and the Republics of France, Mexico, and Brazil. In addition to these regular diplomatic representatives, a State may also employ agents of an irregular and inferior sort who have a certain qualified diplomatic status, as officers in command of armed forces in foreign territory, commanders of ships of war, secret agents sent on diplomatic errands, commissioners for special objects, bearers of dispatches, and, under exceptional circumstances, consuls. All of these enjoy some of the privileges and immunities which attach to the exercise of the diplomatic office.

While it is not in general open to a State to refuse to receive a diplomatic agent from another power, it may, for special reasons, object to receive a particular individual in a diplomatic capacity. If, however, the grounds for such objection do not commend themselves to the State by whom the minister was accredited, it may, as a mark of its disapproval, leave the post vacant for a considerable time. An instance of this was

the rejection in 1885 of a minister appointed by President Cleveland by the Italian and Austrian governments in succession. The grounds of the objection by Italy being satisfactory, another appointment was promptly made, but the Austrian objection being regarded as frivolous and unreasonable, the legation at Vienna was left in the hands of a chargé d'affaires. So, too, a State may, without giving international offense, request the withdrawal of a foreign minister who

has rendered himself obnoxious to the Government to which he is accredited, or may even, in a This serious case, peremptorily dismiss him. was done in the case of Lord Sackville, the British Minister to the United States, who, on the

eve of the Presidential election of 1888, in a private letter incautiously expressed himself on the question of the probable relations of the

Government with Great Britain in the event of President Cleveland's reëlection. This diplomatic indiscretion, occurring in the heat of a Presidential campaign, was treated by the American Government as an open and intentional affront, and the offending minister dismissed without waiting for his recall by his Government. viously the right is one to be exercised with caution, in order to avoid giving offense to the State by whom the disgraced minister was accredited.

Ob

The distinction of the ambassadorial office, as the direct representative of a sovereign power, and the importance of the duties intrusted to it have combined to invest it with a peculiar sanctity. This has, in modern times, taken on the form of a privileged status, attended with certain immunities, which a foreign minister enjoys in the country to which he is accredited. These may be briefly enumerated as follows: (1) Exemption of the minister from the local jurisdiction, both civil and criminal. (2) Inviolability of his house, his papers, and goods from search and seizure. (3) Exemption of his personal effects from imposts and taxation. (4) Liberty of worship for himself and the members of his family and suite. (5) A qualified exemption of his family and train from the local jurisdiction. These immunities are generally referred to the principle of exterritoriality, the domestic jurisdiction of the minister being supposed, by a legal fiction, to go with him and to exclude the local

jurisdiction of the State to which he is accredited. (See ASYLUM; EXTERRITORIALITY.) But in its modern form the doctrine is more properly explained on principles of convenience and international comity, the independence of the minister and the inviolability of his person, his family, and property being essential to the due performance of the high and important functions with which he is invested. The subject is fully treated in ancient and modern treatises on international law (q.v.). Consult: Hall, Treatise on International Law (4th ed., London, 1895); Woolsey, Introduction to International Law (6th ed., New York, 1891); Moore, Digest of the International Law of the United States (Washington, 1903).

DIPLOMATICS (from Lat. diploma, diploma). The science of ancient writings. The term is less used than the more convenient and descriptive term paleography (q.v.).

DIPLO'PIA. See SIGHT, DEFECTS OF. DIPLOP'ODA. See CHILOGNATHA. DIPH'ILUS (Lat., from Gk. Alpiλos), of Sinope. An Attic poet, who flourished about B.C. 300; a contemporary of Meander. He is supposed to have written about one hundred comedies, of which the titles and fragments of about fifty are still extant. He frequently took his subjects from common life and mythology, so that, though in point of time they belonged to the new comedy,

his works seem to have had more of the character

of the Middle Period. The Casina, Commorientes, Vidularia, and Rudens of Plautus are modeled on plays of Diphilus, and Terence borrowed from his Συναποθνήσκοντες, in the Adelphi. The extant fragments of his works are collected in Meineke, Fragmenta Comicorum Græcorum, vols. i. and iv. (Berlin, 1839-57); and in Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, vol. ii. (Leipzig, 1884). These fragments, and the judgments passed on Diphilus in antiquity, have led to the belief that he was one of the most gifted poets of his age.

DIP'NOI (Neo-Lat. nom. pl., from Gk. 8, di-, double velv, pnein, to breathe, referring to their breathing through the gills and the lungs). The lung-fishes, a group of fishes, by some zoologists regarded as forming an entirely separate class of vertebrates. They were more numerously represented in past ages than now, when their only living representatives are the genera Ceratodus (see BARRA MUNDA), Protopterus, and Lepidosiren (see MUDFISH). Their chief peculiarity is in the organs of respiration, since, in addition to piscine gills, they have either one or two lungs proper to breathing air. They have bony scales, but the skeleton is cartilaginous, and thus described by Parker and Haswell: "The notochord is persistent, and the cranium [see Plate] consists of a mass of cartilage with little ossification, but with the addition of a number of membrane bones, the skull is autostylic, the lower jaw articulating with a palatoquadrate process (pal), corresponding to the palato-quadrate of the dogfish, but immovably fixed to the side of the skull. There are four or five cartilaginous branchial arches. The gills are covered over by an operculum. The structure of the paired fins is on a totally different plan from that of any other living fish. The fin, pectoral or pelvic, as the case may be, is leaf-like, or very long and narrow, and the skeleton con

1. BARRAMUNDA (Ceratodus Fosteri): a, Jaw and teeth; b, a lung, laid open; c, lung cell (enlarged).

2. DIPNOIAN SKELETON. (See article Dipnoi).

4. CHIMÆRA: a, face; b, under side of head. (See article Chimæra).

5. BERRYBONE FISH (Coccosteus decipiens).

3. MUDFISH (Lepidosiren): a, mouth and teeth; b, a scale (enlarged).