LAND OF, the country to which Cain withdrew after the murder of Abel. As the precise situation of this country cannot possibly be known, so it has given rise to much ingenious speculation. All that we are told of it is, that it was on the east of Eden,” or, as it may be rendered, before Eden;” which very country of Eden is no sure guide for us, as the situation of that also is disputed. But, be it on the higher or lower Euphrates, (see _Eden_,) the land of Nod which stood before it with respect to the place where Moses wrote, may still preserve the curse of barrenness passed on it for Cain’s sake, namely, in the deserts of Syria or Arabia. The Chaldee interpreters render the word Nod, not as the proper name of a country, but as an appellative applied to Cain himself, signifying a vagabond or fugitive, and read, He dwelt a fugitive in the land.” But the Hebrew reads expressly, He dwelt in the land of Nod.”

NODDY, the name applied, originally by sailors, to a sea-bird from its showing so little fear of man as to be accounted stupid. It is the Sterna stolida of Linnaeus, and the Anous stolidus of modern ornithology, having the figure of a Tern {q.v.~), and belonging to the sub-family Sterninae, but is heavier in flight, with shorter wings and the tail less deeply forked. The plumage is of a uniform sooty hue, excepting the crown of the head, which is light grey. The Noddy is very generally distributed throughout the tropical or nearly tropical oceans, but occasionally wanders into colder climates, and has been met with even in the Irish Sea. It breeds, often in astounding numbers, on low cays and coral-islets, commonly making a shallow nest of sea-weed or small twigs, which may be placed on the ground, on a tuft of grass, or in the fork of a tree, while sometimes it lays its eggs on a bare rock. Mr Saunders {Proc. Zool. Society, 1876, pp. 669-672) admits four other species of the genus :— Anous tenuir ostris, supposed to be confined to the southern part of the Indian Ocean, from Madagascar to West Australia ; A. melanogenys, often confounded with the last, but having nearly as wide a range as the first; and A. leucocapillus, hitherto known only from Torres Strait and the Southern Pacific. These three have much resemblance to A. stolidus, but are smaller in size, and the two latter have the crown white instead of grey. The fourth species, A. caeruleus (with which he includes the A. cinereus of some authors), differs not inconsiderably, being of a dove-colour, lighter on the head and darker on the back, the wings bearing a narrow white bar, with their quill-feathers blackish-brown, while the feet are reddish and the webs yellow. Three more species— A. superciliosus from ...

NODIER, Charles{c. 1780-1844), a writer of greater intrinsic merit and more importance in the history of French literature than is generally recognized, was born at Besançon somewhat less than ten years before the outbreak of the Revolution, but the exact date is strangely uncertain. Besançon for the place and the 29th of April for the day of the month appear to be agreed upon, but the year is sometimes given as 1780, sometimes as 1781, and sometimes as 1783. The earliest seems the most probable. His father was a lawyer of some distinction and had been a teacher of law, and after the outbreak of the Revolution he was appointed mayor of Besançon and consequently chief police magistrate. He seems, from some euphemistic expressions of his friends, to have rather lent himself as an instrument to the tyranny of the Jacobins than to have shared their principles; but his son was for a time an ardent citizen, and is said to have been a club member when he could at the most have been twelve years old. His education in these troublesome times was necessarily haphazard, but appears to have been sufficient. His love of books began very early, and he combined with it, what is not perhaps very often characteristic of the bibliophile proper, a strong interest in natural science. The dates of his early life are given very sparingly, and the chief authority for the details of it is his own Souvenirs, a not very trustworthy source. Having obtained and then lost the post of librarian in his native town, he went to Paris and plunged into literature. He had published a dissertation on the antennae in insects as early as 1798 at Besançon. Entomology continued to be a favourite study with him, but he varied it with philology and pure literature— Le Peintre de Salzbourg dates from this ...