history of Arabia: Prehistory and archaeology: …the dominant linguistic form is Old North Arabian (subclassified into Liḥyānic, Thamūdic, and Ṣafaitic); despite close connections between this group and Arabic, the latter cannot be regarded as lineally descended from it. The Yemenite inscriptions are in Old South Arabian (subclassified into Minaean, Sabaean, Qatabānian, and Hadhramautic), which is a…

the North: …states, the Old Northwest (East North Central States in federal terms), and the Great Plains (West North Central States). Recognized as these four areas, the North includes Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts,

biblical literature: Scandinavian versions: …Stjórn (“Guidance”) manuscript in the Old Norwegian language, probably about 1300. Swedish versions of the Pentateuch and of Acts have survived from the 14th century, as has a manuscript of Joshua and Judges by Nicholaus Ragnvaldi of Vadstena from about 1500. The oldest Danish version, covering Genesis through Kings, derives…

Nubian languages: Documents in Old Nubian, which appears to be the ancestor of modern Central Nubian, date from the end of the 8th century to the beginning of the 14th century. These are usually translations of Christian writings originally in Greek and are written, as is modern Nubian, in…

Oraibi, Hopi pueblo (village), Navajo county, northeastern Arizona, U.S. The pueblo is situated on the narrow, rocky Third Mesa of the Hopi Indian Reservation. It is the unofficial capital of the reservation and is thought to be the oldest continuously occupied settlement in the United States (from

Amish: …in North America, primarily the Old Order Amish Mennonite Church. The church originated in the late 17th century among followers of Jakob Ammann.

Rnying-ma-pa, (Tibetan: “The Old Order”), second largest Buddhist sect in Tibet; it claims to transmit the original teachings of the celebrated Indian Vajrayāna (Tantric Buddhism) master Padmasambhava, who visited Tibet in the 8th century and, with Śāntirakṣita (another Indian teacher), founded at

Iranian languages: Middle Iranian: …well-known are Old Ossetic (Scytho-Sarmatian) and Bactrian, but from what is known it would seem likely that those languages were equally distinctive. There was probably more than one dialect of each of the languages of the eastern group, although there is certainty only in the case of Saka, for…

Turkic languages: Literary languages: Volga Bolgarian, Old Kipchak, Old Ottoman, and Early Chagatai. Khwārezmian, used in the 13th–14th centuries in the empire of the Golden Horde, is based on the old language, but mixed with Oghuz and Kipchak elements. Volga Bolgarian is preserved in inscriptions on tombstones (13th–14th centuries). The main record of…

Paphos: The older ancient city (Greek: Palaipaphos) was located at modern Pírgos (Kouklia); New Paphos, which had superseded Old Paphos by Roman times, was 10 miles (16 km) farther west. New Paphos and Ktima together form modern Paphos.

Paul Theroux: The Great Railway Bazaar and The Mosquito Coast: …Theroux’s subsequent travel books included The Old Patagonian Express (1979), The Happy Isles of Oceania (1992), The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean (1995), and Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town (2002).

Robert Mills: …Treasury (built 1836–42) and the Old Patent Office (built 1836–40; later modified; now part of the Smithsonian Institution) in Washington, D.C.; the wings of Independence Hall in Philadelphia (1807); and the monuments to George Washington in Baltimore, Md. (designed 1814, erected 1815–29), and Washington, D.C. (designed 1836, completed 1884).

Louis Marie Anne Couperus: …de dingen, die voorbijgaan (1906; Old People and the Things That Pass). Couperus made use of new word-formations in evoking atmosphere and displayed a gently ironic humour and an extraordinary narrative skill.

cuneiform: Old Persian and Elamite: Scattered examples of Old Persian inscriptions were reported back to Europe by western travelers in Persia since the 17th century, and the name cuneiform was first applied to the script by Engelbert Kämpfer (c. 1700). During the 18th century many new inscriptions were reported; especially important were those…

pitch: …it had reached the “Old Philharmonic Pitch” of about a′ = 453. The inconvenience of this high pitch became apparent, for it strained singers’ voices and made wind instruments quickly out of date. An international commission met in Paris in 1858–59 and adopted a compromise pitch called diapason normal…

Alte Pinakothek, fine art museum in Munich noted for its collection of paintings by 14th- to 18th-century European masters. It is one of several institutions that constitute the Bavarian State Picture Galleries (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen). (Read Sister Wendy’s Britannica essay on art

canals and inland waterways: Ancient works: …the Li River, and the Bian Canal in Henan. Of later canals the most spectacular was the Grand Canal, the first 966-km (600-mile) section of which was opened to navigation in 610. This waterway enabled grain to be transported from the lower Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) and Huai River valleys…

Alte Pinakothek, fine art museum in Munich noted for its collection of paintings by 14th- to 18th-century European masters. It is one of several institutions that constitute the Bavarian State Picture Galleries (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen). (Read Sister Wendy’s Britannica essay on art

Kamala Das: … (1965), The Descendants (1967), and The Old Playhouse, and Other Poems (1973). Subsequent English-language works included the novel Alphabet of Lust (1976) and the short stories “A Doll for the Child Prostitute” (1977) and “Padmavati the Harlot” (1992). Notable among her many Malayalam works were the short-story collection Thanuppu (1967;…

Old Point Comfort, historic spit and point, part of the city of Hampton, southeastern Virginia, U.S. It lies at the southeast end of the peninsula between the James and York rivers and is on the north shore of Hampton Roads harbour, opposite Norfolk. Named Cape Comfort by the colonists of Jamestown

San Diego: The contemporary city: …Monument, established in 1913, preserves Old Point Loma Lighthouse (built in 1855).

Marseille: The city site: The Old Port is a natural harbor and one of the most westerly of the inlets along the rocky coastline characteristic of the northeastern Mediterranean; farther west, beyond a large tidal lake called the Berre Lagoon (Étang de Berre), the shoreline flattens out. There the sandy…

James Edward, the Old Pretender , also known as the Old Pretender, was the son of the deposed Roman Catholic monarch James II of England and claimant to the English and Scottish thrones. Styled James III of England and James VIII of Scotland by his supporters, he made several halfhearted efforts to

Venice: The Piazza San Marco: …by two official buildings, the Old Procurators’ Offices and the New Procurators’ Offices. The buildings now house fashionable shops and elegant cafés, whose string ensembles compete with each other in summer months to attract customers to their open-air tables. At the basilica end of the Old Procurators’ building stands the…

Old Prussian language, West Baltic language extinct since the 17th century; it was spoken in the former German area of East Prussia (now in Poland and Russia). The poorly attested Yotvingian dialect was closely related to Old Prussian. Old Prussian preserved many archaic Baltic features that do not

Bloemfontein: …the provincial council), and the Old Raadsaal (1849), a one-room house that is now a national monument. Bloemfontein is the seat of the University of the Free State (founded 1904). Bloemfontein became part of the Mangaung Local Municipality in 2000. Pop. (2005 est.) city, 379,000.

Old Red Sandstone, thick sequence of Devonian rocks (formed from 416 million to 359.2 million years ago) that are continental rather than marine in origin and occur in northwestern Europe, Scandinavia, Greenland, and northeastern Canada. Deposits of Old Red Sandstone have been extensively studied

Alexis de Tocqueville: Return to politics: …of research and intermittent illnesses, The Old Regime and the Revolution appeared in 1856 as the first part of his projected study. Tocqueville sought to demonstrate the continuity of political behaviour and attitudes that made postrevolutionary French society as prepared to accept despotism as that of the old regime. In…

Francis Parkman: Literary career.: By contrast, Parkman’s The Old Régime in Canada, published in 1874, provides a sweeping panorama of New France in her infancy and youth, a pioneer work in social history that holds the interest of the reader no less than his narrative volumes. Parkman’s literary artistry is perhaps best…

paleoconservatism, movement within American conservatism that seeks, among other goals, to preserve the country’s Anglo-Saxon and Christian heritage; to drastically limit and decentralize the powers of the federal government; to promote respect for traditional regional cultures, especially that of

Old Believer, member of a group of Russian religious dissenters who refused to accept the liturgical reforms imposed upon the Russian Orthodox Church by the patriarch of Moscow Nikon (1652–58). Numbering millions of faithful in the 17th century, the Old Believers split into a number of different

Atchafalaya River: …in east-central Louisiana where the Old River (about 7 miles [11 km] long) links the Red River with the Mississippi, and it flows generally south for about 140 miles (225 km) to Atchafalaya Bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico in southern Louisiana. Its length including the Red River…

Belize River, river rising in northeastern Guatemala as the Río Mopán and flows about 180 miles (290 km) northeast past Benque Viejo, San Ignacio (El Cayo), and Roaring Creek (site of Belmopan, capital of Belize [formerly British Honduras]) into the Caribbean Sea at Belize City. During the

Old Roman chant, repertory of liturgical melodies written in Rome between the 11th and the 13th century and discovered about 1890. The earliest of the five manuscripts containing the chants (three graduals and two antiphonaries) dates from 1071, although the Roman tradition of worship can be traced

Charles Comiskey was a baseball player, manager and owner during the formative years of professional baseball, and one of the founders of the American League. Comiskey began playing semiprofessional baseball in 1876 and in 1882 joined the St. Louis Brown Stockings (later known as the Browns) in the

Zachary Taylor was the 12th president of the United States (1849–50). Elected on the ticket of the Whig Party as a hero of the Mexican-American War (1846–48), he died only 16 months after taking office. Taylor’s parents, Richard Taylor and Mary Strother, migrated to Kentucky from Virginia shortly

Greenwich: The Old Royal Naval College is located on the site of a 15th-century riverbank house that was converted into a royal palace (known as Placentia) by the Tudor monarchs. Henry VIII (reigned 1509–47) was born at Placentia, and he spent time there with his wives Catherine…

Russian language: The term Old Russian is generally applied to the common East Slavic language in use before that time.

Russian literature: Old Russian literature (10th–17th centuries): The conventional term “Old Russian literature” is anachronistic for several reasons. The authors of works written during this time obviously did not think of themselves as “old Russians” or as predecessors of Tolstoy. Moreover, the term, which represents the perspective…

South Picene language, an ancient Italic language (formerly referred to as Old Sabellic [Old Sabellian], or Central Adriatic) known from some two dozen short inscriptions (5th and 6th centuries bc) found in east-central Italy, primarily in the region of present-day Teramo (the southern part of

South Picene language, an ancient Italic language (formerly referred to as Old Sabellic [Old Sabellian], or Central Adriatic) known from some two dozen short inscriptions (5th and 6th centuries bc) found in east-central Italy, primarily in the region of present-day Teramo (the southern part of

Old Saint Peter’s Basilica, first basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome, a five-aisled basilican-plan church with apsed transept at the west end that was begun between 326 and 333 at the order of the Roman emperor Constantine and finished about 30 years later. The church was entered through an atrium

Old Saxon language, earliest recorded form of Low German, spoken by the Saxon tribes between the Rhine and Elbe rivers and between the North Sea and the Harz Mountains from the 9th until the 12th century. A distinctive characteristic of Old Saxon, shared with Old Frisian and Old English, is its

Old Saxon language: The Heliand, a life of Christ in alliterative verse written about 830, and a fragment of a translation of Genesis are the most significant Old Saxon literary works that have survived, although a number of minor fragments also exist. The modern Low German dialects developed from…

Old Saybrook, town (township), Middlesex county, southern Connecticut, U.S. It lies on Long Island Sound at the mouth of the Connecticut River. The town includes the resort borough of Fenwick, Old Saybrook Center, and Saybrook Point. The latter was occupied in 1633 by the Dutch, but in 1635 a

Scandinavian languages: History of Old Scandinavian: About 125 inscriptions dated from ad 200 to 600, carved in the older runic alphabet (futhark), are chronologically and linguistically the oldest evidence of any Germanic language. Most are from Scandinavia, but enough have been found in southeastern Europe to suggest that the…

Tobias Wolff: The novel Old School (2003) is a penetrating look at what happens when a prep-school student plagiarizes someone else’s work in an attempt to win a literary competition. A latter collection of short stories, Our Story Begins, appeared in 2008.

Escola Velha, (Portuguese: “Old School”), Spanish dramatists in the early 16th century who were influenced by the Portuguese dramatist Gil Vicente. Although in form Vicente was a medieval dramatist, his skill in comedy and character portrayal and the varied subject matter of his plays made him a

Will Ferrell: Elf, Anchorman, and Talladega Nights: …one of the stars in Old School, and he took the lead role in Elf (2003), playing a charmingly naive human raised in Santa’s village who ventures to New York City. Both films were box office successes. He then starred in a string of hit comedies, notably Anchorman: The Legend…

Charles Hodge: …year as moderator of the “Old School” Presbyterian Church. This body, like the “Princeton School” of orthodox Calvinist theology, in which Hodge was a major figure, stressed the verbal infallibility of the Bible and asserted other generally conservative views.

Sherman Alexie: Literary career: …Indian on the Moon and Old Shirts & New Skins—and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a collection of interwoven stories that won the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first book of fiction.

Old Church Slavonic language, Slavic language based primarily on the Macedonian (South Slavic) dialects around Thessalonica (Thessaloníki). It was used in the 9th century by the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius, who were natives of Thessalonica, for preaching to the Moravian Slavs and for

all fours, ancestor of a family of card games dating back to 17th-century England and first mentioned in The Complete Gamester of Charles Cotton in 1674. The face card formerly known as the knave owes its modern name of jack to this game. Originally, all fours was regarded as a lower-class game—it

Eric Clapton: …releases, such as Clapton (2010), Old Sock (2013), and I Still Do (2016), finely captured his leisurely late-career form. In 2018 Clapton released his first holiday album, Happy Xmas.

history of Arabia: Prehistory and archaeology: The Yemenite inscriptions are in Old South Arabian (subclassified into Minaean, Sabaean, Qatabānian, and Hadhramautic), which is a wholly independent group within the Semitic family of languages. (The Old North Arabian and Old South Arabian inscriptions and graffiti are in scripts of a South Semitic type, of which Ethiopic is…

Southwark: Old Southwark, known traditionally as The Borough, was a market town from early Saxon times. It became a haven for criminals and prostitutes in the Middle Ages. In the mid-16th century it became known as the Bridge Ward Without or the ward of Bridge-without. (For…

Sir Muirhead Bone: In 1936 Bone published Old Spain, a popular two-volume collection of watercolours and drawings accompanied by a text by his wife. During World Wars I and II he served as official artist with the British forces. He was knighted in 1937.

Canadian literature: From settlement to 1900: …animated nature, was published as Old Spookses’ Pass, Malcolm’s Katie, and Other Poems in 1884.

anseriform: Locomotion: Long-tailed, or old squaw, ducks (Clangula hyemalis) have been caught in fishing nets more than 50 metres (160 feet) deep, but this is exceptional; most species do not dive much below 6 metres (20 feet). They normally remain below for less than 30 seconds, occasionally up to…

Springfield: In the Old State Capitol (1837–53; rebuilt in the 1960s as a state historic site), Lincoln served his last term in the legislature (1840–41), practiced before the state Supreme Court, delivered his famous “House Divided” address (see text), and maintained an office as president-elect. His body lay…

Boston: Area of the colonial town: …colonial town was at the Old State House (built 1711–47).

Paleolithic Period, ancient cultural stage, or level, of human development, characterized by the use of rudimentary chipped stone tools. The popular Paleo diet, or Stone Age diet, is based on foods humans presumably would have consumed during the Paleolithic Period. (See also Stone Age.) The onset

Julian calendar, dating system established by Julius Caesar as a reform of the Roman republican calendar. By the 40s bce the Roman civic calendar was three months ahead of the solar calendar. Caesar, advised by the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, introduced the Egyptian solar calendar, taking the

typography: Aesthetic qualities of the typographic page: …face—though Americans sometimes call it old style. In general, old faces were largely those types developed from c. 1722 to c. 1763 (dates of William Caslon and John Baskerville). Their letter forms had marked affinities with the penned letter styles of the scribes: they tended to squareness, there was little…

Qianlong: Contributions to the arts of Qianlong: …to the beautification of the Yuanmingyuan near Beijing. He was to reside there more and more often, and he considered the ensemble formed by its numerous pavilions, lakes, and gardens as the imperial residence par excellence. He increased the estate and erected new buildings. At his request, several Jesuit missionaries…

Norman Shaw: …own house (1875), Hampstead; and Old Swan House (1876), Chelsea. The publication of Shaw’s domestic designs carried his influence outside England and was an element in the development of the American Shingle style. Shaw was also chosen to design the castle-like New Scotland Yard building in Whitehall, London, which opened…

Swedish literature: The Middle Ages: …long period of linguistic change, Old Swedish emerged as a separate language. The foundations of a native literature were established in the 13th century. The oldest extant manuscript in Old Swedish is the Västgötalagan (“Law of West Gotland”), part of a legal code compiled in the 1220s. These legal documents…

James Whitcomb Riley: …Journal and later published as “The Old Swimmin’-Hole” and ’Leven More Poems (1883). Riley was briefly local editor of the Anderson (Ind.) Democrat, but his later life was spent in Indianapolis.

Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible as interpreted among the various branches of Christianity. In Judaism the Hebrew Bible is not only the primary text of instruction for a moral life but also the historical record of God’s promise, first articulated in his covenant with Abraham, to consider the Jews

apocrypha, (from Greek apokryptein, “to hide away”), in biblical literature, works outside an accepted canon of scripture. The history of the term’s usage indicates that it referred to a body of esoteric writings that were at first prized, later tolerated, and finally excluded. In its broadest

Asia: Chronological summary: …the Paleo-Tethys Ocean (also called Paleo-Tethys Sea), a giant triangular eastward-opening embayment of Pangea. A strip of continental material was torn away from the southern margin of the Paleo-Tethys and migrated northward, rotating around the western apex of the Tethyan triangle much like the action of a windshield wiper. That…

Confucianism: Dong Zhongshu: The Confucian visionary: …Confucian Classics, known as the Old Text school, had already set in before the fall of the Western Han. Yang Xiong (c. 53 bce–18 ce) in the Fayan (“Model Sayings”), a collection of moralistic aphorisms in the style of the Analects, and the Taixuan jing (“Classic of the Supremely Profound…

The Spoils of Poynton, short novel by Henry James, first published as a serial titled The Old Things in The Atlantic Monthly in 1896. Retitled The Spoils of Poynton, it was published as a book in 1897. Poynton Park is the home of old Mrs. Gereth, an antique collector with impeccable taste who has

Mark Twain: Youth: …he remembered it in “Old Times on the Mississippi” (1875), the village was a “white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer’s morning,” until the arrival of a riverboat suddenly made it a hive of activity. The gamblers, stevedores, and pilots, the boisterous raftsmen and elegant travelers, all…

Thomas Morris was a Scottish golfer who won the Open Championship (British Open) tournament four times. Morris spent most of his life at St. Andrews as a professional player and greenskeeper (1863–1903). During his lifetime he became an almost legendary figure in golf, winning the Open in 1861,

gin: Old Tom is a slightly sweetened gin, and various fruit-flavoured gins are made by adding the appropriate flavourings to finished gin. Sloe gin is not a true gin but a sweet liqueur, flavoured with sloe berries, the small, sour fruit of the blackthorn.

Prague: Medieval growth: …opposite Hradčany, developed into the Old Town (Staré město), particularly after the construction of the first stone bridge, the Judith Bridge, over the river in 1170. By 1230 the Old Town had been given borough status and was defended by a system of walls and fortifications. On the opposite bank,…

Warsaw: City layout: In the Old Town, which was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 1980, the Gothic St. John’s Cathedral and the red-brick fortifications known as the Barbican remain from the medieval period. The houses of the Old Town Market Square have been rebuilt in the…

Gamla Stan, the medieval center of Stockholm, Sweden. It consists of Stads Island, Helgeands Island, and Riddar Island. Most of the buildings in this area date from the 16th and 17th centuries and are legally protected from renovation. Stads Island contains the Royal Palace; Storkyrkan, also called

Richmond: …1661 at Oude Dorp (Old Town). Three years later the British took control. Richmond County (named for Charles Lennox, 1st duke of Richmond and natural son of Charles II) was organized in 1683.

Edinburgh: The Old Town: Edinburgh Castle, 443 feet (135 metres) above sea level, dominates the city. Archaeological excavations have shown that the Castle Rock, previously thought to have first been fortified as a stronghold of the Gododdin in the 6th century, originated in the Bronze Age and…

Brussels: City layout: The historic Old Town of inner Brussels forms the centre of the modern metropolis, but the pentagonal walls that once surrounded it were replaced by a ring of tree-lined boulevards in the early 19th century. Since 1830, when Belgium became an independent kingdom, Brussels has continued to…

Hamburg: The city layout: …of the city is the Altstadt (Old Town), the former medieval settlement, bounded by the harbour and by a string of roads that follow the line of the old fortifications. Within this core there are few great buildings to remind the visitor of the city’s thousand-year history apart from the…

Bremen: Geography: Other outstanding features in the Altstadt, or Old Town, in the restored heart of the city, are the famous marketplace with its 11th-century cathedral, a picturesque row of old gabled houses, and the modern-style Parliament. Districts heavily bombed in World War II (69 percent of the houses were destroyed) were…

Panama City, city, seat (1913) of Bay county, northwestern Florida, U.S. It is the port of entry on St. Andrew Bay (an arm of the Gulf of Mexico), about 95 miles (150 km) east of Pensacola. The first English settlement (c. 1765), known as Old Town, was a fishing village later called St. Andrew. In

Billy Ray Cyrus: …on a remix of “Old Town Road,” a song whose original version (also by Lil Nas X) had debuted on Billboard’s R&B/hip-hop chart and also its country chart but then was removed from the latter chart for being insufficiently country-sounding. The remix went to number one on the Billboard…

Turkic languages: Literary languages: …period may be divided into Old Turkic proper, Old Uyghur, and Qarakhanid. The earliest known records of Old Turkic proper are inscriptions on stone stelae erected in the 8th century in the Orhon River valley (Mongolia) in honour of certain rulers of the Old Turkic empire. This language is also…

Turkic languages: Literary languages: …divided into Old Turkic proper, Old Uyghur, and Qarakhanid. The earliest known records of Old Turkic proper are inscriptions on stone stelae erected in the 8th century in the Orhon River valley (Mongolia) in honour of certain rulers of the Old Turkic empire. This language is also represented in somewhat…

Old Vic: …became popularly known as the Old Vic. Under the management (1880–1912) of Emma Cons, a social reformer, the Old Vic was transformed into a temperance amusement hall known as the Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee Tavern, where musical concerts and scenes from Shakespeare and opera were performed. Lilian Baylis, Emma…

Old Vic, theatre in the Greater London borough of Lambeth. It was formerly the home of a theatre company that became the nucleus of the National Theatre. The company’s theatre building opened in 1818 as the Royal Coburg and produced mostly popular melodramas. In 1833 it was redecorated and renamed

Chicago Water Tower, one of the few buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Completed in 1869, the limestone structure with its ornate castellated Gothic Revival style is one of the most iconic buildings along Chicago’s famed “Magnificent Mile” of Michigan Avenue, and it is the

White Sulphur Springs: The White Sulphur Springs Hotel (1854), known as the “Old White,” preceded the Greenbrier and served as headquarters and hospital to both sides during the American Civil War. The President’s Cottage (1835) housed presidents throughout the 19th century and since 1932 has served as a historical…

Indian summer, period of dry, unseasonably warm weather in late October or November in the central and eastern United States. The term originated in New England and probably arose from the Indians’ practice of gathering winter stores at this time. This autumn warm period also occurs in Europe,

The Old Wives’ Tale, novel by Arnold Bennett, published in 1908. This study of the changes wrought by time on the lives of two English sisters during the 19th century is a masterpiece of literary realism. Constance and Sophia Baines, the daughters of a shopkeeper, grow up in the rural town of

George Peele: …achievement, the fantastical comic romance The Old Wives’ Tale (c. 1591–94). He also wrote commemorative poems and city pageants.

Paul Gauguin: Early maturity: For example, Gauguin’s Old Women of Arles (Mistral) (1888) portrays a group of women moving through a flattened, arbitrarily conceived landscape in a solemn procession. As in much of his work from this period, Gauguin applied thick paint in a heavy manner to raw canvas; in his rough…

avocet: The Old World avocet (R. avosetta) has the crown and hindneck black, the wings black and white. It breeds in central Asia and in scattered localities in Europe. Many winter in Africa’s Rift Valley. The slightly larger American avocet (R. americana), which is about 45 cm…

migration: In Europe: (Carduelis carduelis), and blackbirds (Turdus merula) are usually sedentary in western Europe; they are usually migratory, however, in northern Europe, where their flights resemble a short migration. Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) are sedentary in western Europe, where large numbers gather from eastern Europe. Large flocks also pass the winter…

lygaeid bug: …the Old World, or Egyptian, cotton stainer (Oxycarenus hyalinipennis) and the Australian Nysius vinitor, both of which are destructive to fruit trees, and the predatory Geocoris punctipes, which feeds on mites, termites, and other small plant-feeding insects.

deer: Old and New World deer: …the Old World deer (subfamily Cervinae) and the New World deer (subfamily Capreolinae). This division reflects where the deer originally evolved; however, now it is not a geographical distinction but instead derives from their different foot structures. In the Old World deer the second and fifth hand bones (metapodia) have…