NESSLER'S TEST-NEST-BUILDING APES.

9, Russia, under his guidance, refrained from interference, till opportunity occurred of dealing a deadly blow to the revolutionary cause in Hungary, and, at the same time, of bringing Austria very much under Russian influence. Being one of the chiefs of the German or moderate party in Russia, N. is supposed to have exerted himself strenuously to preserve peace with the Western Powers; and after the war had broken out in 1854, and the ill success of Russia was manifest, he undoubtedly strove for the re-establishment of peace, and for the assembling of a congress to settle all disputes. After the accession of Alexander II., he retired from the direction of foreign affairs, and was succeeded in that department by Prince Alexander Gortschakoff, but retained the dignity of chancellor of the empire, and a seat in the ministerial council. He died at St. Petersburg.

NESSLER'S TEST, n. něs'lérz těst [named from the inventor] in chem., a very delicate test for ammonia, consisting of iodide of mercury dissolved in iodide of potassium, and made alkaline with solution of soda. It gives a brown precipitate or color according to the quantity of ammonia present, and is capable of detecting one part of that substance in ten million parts of water.

NESSUS, nes'sus: one of the fabled Centaurs of Greek mythology, son of Ixion and Nephele, or the sun and the cloud. The name belonged to a river of Thessaly, and the fabled creature figured the vapor of the stream, with its relation to sun and cloud. In the mythical story, Nessus, pretending to assist Hercules (who is again the sungod) to get possession of Dejanira, plays a trick on him and gets his death from one of the poisoned arrows of the god-hero. In dying, N. plans revenge by sending to Dejanira his tunic, deeply blood-poisoned, as a gift to excite love. She gives it to Hercules, who puts it on and is killed by the poison which came from his own

arrows.

NEST, n. něst [Ger. nest; Sw. näste, a nest: Pol. gniazdo, a nest, a breed: Bret. neiz; Gael. nead; L. nidus: allied to Ger. nähen, S. nestan, L. nectere, to sew, bind, tie]: bed or dwelling prepared by a bird for incubation, and for its young till able to fly; any place where insects or small animals are produced (see NESTS): a warm, close place of abode; a number of persons dwelling together, in an ill sense, as a nest of thieves; a number of boxes or baskets placed one within the other; a set of small drawers; in OE., a place of residence; abode: V. to build and occupy a nest. NESTING, imp. NESTED, pp. NEST-EGG, an egg left in a nest to prevent the hen forsaking it; money laid up as a beginning or nucleus.

NEST-BUILDING APES: various kinds of monkeys, including the higher anthropoid apes, which build sleeping-places for their females and young. Koppenfels asserts that the gorilla breaks and twists the branches of a tree 30 ft. from the ground, and piles on twigs and a layer of leaf-moss. The male animal crouches all night at the

foot of the tree with his back against it, and thus protects his household against leopards. So the chimpanzee makes a nest for his family on a forked branch, and spends the night sitting on guard immediately beneath it. The orang unquestionably makes a nest of boughs and leaves laid crosswise, lined with fronds or leaves of orchids; these nests are 10 to 15 ft. high. Gibbons seem not to build nests at all. The best authorities think that the pent-house which Du Chaillu said was built by the Nschiego Mbouve (which Hartmann unhesitatingly identifies with the chimpanzee) was suggested solely by a sight of the male animal sitting beneath its family nest as guardian. The cut is alleged to have been

Nest-building Ape (Troglodytes calvus).

winch embellished by imagination. Some assert (though Wallace doubts it) that the orang makes a fresh lair every night; others, that this is done when the one in use no longer keeps out the rain, perhaps once in 10 or 15 days. Du Chaillu's nest-building ape (Nschiego Mbouve) is nearly four ft. in length. Du Chaillu supposes this ape to rest all night on a projecting branch, under its nest or umbrella, with an arm round the stem of the tree for security. The nests are generally 15 or 20 ft. from the ground. These apes inhabit the most lonely parts of the forests. The nests are never congregated together, so that this ape does not seem to be gregarious. It feeds on fruits.-Du Chaillu discovered a second species of nestbuilding ape, on his second visit to the Ogobai, very similar to the Troglodytes calvus, but which constructs its nest in different fashion. It is called Nschiego Nkengo by the natives. It makes its nest or shelter 20 or 30 ft. from the ground, by bending over and intertwining a number of the weaker boughs, the foliage of which forms its protection from rain.

NESTLE, v. něs ́l [AS. nestlian, to nestle-from nest, a nest, which see]: to cherish and fondle closely, as a bird its young; to lie close and snug. NESTLING, imp. něs'ling: ADJ. recently hatched: N. a young bird from the nest or in it. NESTLED, pp. něs ́ld.

NESTOR, nes tor: according to ancient Grecian legend, son of Neleus and Chloris, born in the Messenian Pylos. He escaped destruction when Hercules slew all his brothers, being then a dweller among the Geronians, with whom he was brought up. He married Eurydice, by whom he became the father of a numerous family. In his youth he was distinguished for valor in wars with the Arcadians, Eleians, and the Centaurs, and in his advanced age for wisdom. Although he was an old man when the expedition against Troy was undertaken, he joined it with his Pylians in 60 ships. Homer makes him the great counselor of the Grecian chiefs, and extols his eloquence as superior even to that of Ulysses. His authority was considered equal even to that of the immortal gods. N. returned in safety to his own dominions after the fall of Troy, with Menelaus and Diomedes, and long ruled over the people of Pylos.

NESTORIAN, n. něs-tō'ri-ăn: one of an anc. sect founded by Nestorius of Constantinople in the 5th century, who taught that the divine and human natures of Christ did not unite and form one person-that Mary was not the mother of God, but of Christ: ADJ. of or relating to the Nestorians. NESTORIANISM, n. distinctive doctrine of the Nestorians (see NESTORIUS: also, for their history to the time of its condemnation). In later ages, even after the Council of Ephesus, Nestorianism prevailed in Assyria and Persia, chiefly through the influence of the well-known school of Edessa. Although vigorously repressed in the Roman empire, it was protected, and probably the more on that account, by the Persians, and ultimately was established by King Pherozes as the national church, with a patriarch resident at Seleucia; its fundamental doctrine, as laid down in the synod of Seleucia 496, being the existence of two distinct persons as Christ, united solely by a unity of will and affection. Under the rule of the caliphs, the Nestorians had considerable protection, and throughout the countries of the East their community extended itself. For their condition in central Asia during the medieval period, see JOHN PRESTER. In the middle of the 12th c., their church reckoned no fewer than 90 bishops under regular metropolitans, together with 56 others, whose special dependencies are unknown; but in the destructive career of Tamerlane, they shared the common fate of all the representatives of the eastern civilization. In the 16th c., a great schism took place in this body, of which a portion renounced their distinctive doctrine, and placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, to whom, under the title of Chaldean Christians, they have

since remained faithful. The others still maintain their old creed and their ancient organization. Their chief seat is in the mountain-ranges of Kurdistan. They are at present a poor and illiterate race, numbering about 140,000, and subject to a patriarch residing at Diz (who is always chosen from the same family, and takes invariably the name of Schamun, or Simon) and 18 bishops. All these prelates are bound to observe celibacy, but marriage is permitted to the priests and inferior clergy. Their liturgical books recognize seven sacraments, but confession is infrequent, if not altogether disused. Marriage is dissoluble by the sentence of the patriarch; the communion is administered in both kinds, and though the language of the liturgy plainly implies the belief of transubstantiation, yet, according to Layard, that doctrine is not popularly held among them. The fasts are strict and of very long duration, amounting to very nearly one half of the entire year. They pray for the dead, but are said to reject the notion of purgatory, and the only sacred image which they use or reverence is that of the cross. The Nestorians of Kurdistan, like the Christians of the Lebanon, have suffered much from time to time through the fanaticism of the wild tribes among whom they reside. In a massacre 1843, and again 1846, many fell victims; and even still they owe much of their security to the influence exercised in their favor by the foreign representatives at the Turkish and Persian courts.

There is another body of Nestorians who have existed in India from the period of the early migrations of the sect, and who are called by the name of Syrian Christians. Their chief seat is in Travancore, where they number about 100,000. Among both bodies of Nestorians, European missionaries, Rom. Cath. and Prot., have of late years endeavored to effect an entrance. The missions of the Amer. Board to the Nestorians in Persia have been interesting and successful. In some cases, priests and even bishops have put themselves under missionary instruction. The missionaries found these relics of an ancient and powerful church in great ignorance and poverty, without any printed Scriptures, and almost without any books. Now, they are supplied with the Bible both in their ancient language and in the vernacular. Of various schoolbooks about 12,000 vols. have been printed, periodicals are circulated, and boarding-school for girls and a high school for boys have been established, at which hundreds have been fitted for usefulness, of which number more than 70 have become preachers of the gospel. The Nestorian converts themselves have become missionaries to the Moslems, Jews, and Malaken's of Russia. See Perkins's Residence of Eight Years in Persia, among the Nestorian Christians (Andover 1843); Anderson's Oriental Churches (1872); Buchanan's account (1807); Smith and Grant's Researches; and Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern Church.

NESTORIUS, něs-to'ri-us: patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431; d. some time after 439; b. Germanicia, a city of n. Syria, in the patriarchate of Antioch. He was probably a disciple of the celebrated Theodore of Mopsuestia; and having received priest's orders at Antioch, became so eminent for his fluency, if not eloquence, sa preacher, and for grave demeanor and exemplary life, that, on occasion of a dispute about the election of a patriarch of Constantinople, he was selected by the emperor, 428, to fill the vacant see. Soon after his consecration, a controversy arose as to the divine and human natures of our Lord, in which N. took a leading part. One of the priests, who followed N. to Constantinople, Anastasius, having in a sermon, which was by some ascribed to N. himself, denied that the Virgin Mary could be truly called the 'mother of God,' being only in truth the mother of the man Christ, N. warmly defended Anastasius, espoused this view, and elaborated it into the theory which has since been known by his name, and which equivalently, if not in formal terms, exaggerated the distinction of two natures in our Lord into a distinction of two persons-the human person of Jesus and the Divine Person of the Word. An animated controversy ensued, which extended from Constantinople to the other patriarchates, and drew from Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, a formal condemnation of the doctrine of N. in 12 anathemas still preserved, and a similar condemnation, accompanied by a threat of deposition and excommunication, from Celestine, bishop of Rome, unless he would withdraw the obnoxious doctrine. N. remaining firm in his opinions, a general council was convened at Ephesus 431, at which Cyril took the most active and prominent part, and in which, notwithstanding the absence of the patriarch John of Antioch and his bishops, N. was condemned and deposed. Considerable opposition was offered to this judgment for a time, but ultimately N. was confined in a monastery near Constantinople, whence, after four years, still persisting in his views, he was banished to the Greater Oasis in upper Egypt, and, after several changes of his place of confinement, died in exile. The account given by Evagrius, that his death was caused by a disease in which his tongue was eaten by worms, rests, according to Evagrius himself, on a single and unnamed authority. The more probable narratives ascribe his death to the effects of a fall.