Columbia Encyclopedia

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botany

(Encyclopedia)botany, science devoted to the study of plants. Botany, microbiology, and zoology together compose the science of biology. Humanity's earliest concern with plants was with their practical uses, i.e., ...

working dog

(Encyclopedia)working dog, classification used by breeders and kennel clubs to designate dogs raised by humans to herd cattle and sheep, as draft animals, as message dispatchers in wartime, in police and rescue wor...

sporting dog

(Encyclopedia)sporting dog, classification used by breeders and kennel clubs to designate dogs bred for pointing, flushing, and retrieving game. These dogs hunt by air scent—as opposed to most hounds, which are g...

squirrel

(Encyclopedia)squirrel, name for small or medium-sized rodents of the family Sciuridae, found throughout the world except in Australia, Madagascar, and the polar regions; it is applied especially to the tree-living...

language

(Encyclopedia)language, systematic communication by vocal symbols. It is a universal characteristic of the human species. Nothing is known of its origin, although scientists have identified a gene that clearly cont...

surgery

(Encyclopedia)surgery, branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of injuries and the excision and repair of pathological conditions by means of operative procedures (see also anesthesia; medicin...

plant

(Encyclopedia)plant, any organism of the plant kingdom, as opposed to one of the animal kingdom or of the kingdoms Fungi, Protista, or Monera in the five-kingdom system of classification. (A more recent system, sug...

Native American languages

(Encyclopedia)Native American languages, languages of the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere and their descendants. A number of the Native American languages that were spoken at the time of the European arriv...

fur

(Encyclopedia)fur, hairy covering of an animal, especially the skins of animals that have thick, soft, close-growing hair next to the skin itself and coarser protective hair above it. The underhair is frequently ca...

diplomatic service

(Encyclopedia)diplomatic service, organized body of agents maintained by governments to communicate with one another. In the 20th and 21st cent. there have been numerous meetings of heads of state and foreign min...