is famous for its beauty. There are about 24,0004 inhabitants—all Moslems except about 150 Samaritans and perhaps 700 Christians. The inhabitants are notorious for fanaticism and lawlessness, and Europeans are usually greeted with vile epithets. There are missions, both Protestant and Roman Catholic; and an important hospital under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society. There is a flourishing trade in soap, which is here manufactured, and a considerable commerce in wool and cotton with the regions E. of the Jordan.
In the neighbourhood of Nāblus are shown: (1) a modern building which covers the traditional site of the tomb of Joseph, as accepted by Jews, Samaritans and Christians. The authority for the burial of Joseph at Shechem is the speech of Stephen (Acts vii. 16), though Josephus places the sepulchre at Hebron (Ant. II. vin. 2). Moslem tradition also regards Shechem as the burial-place of Joseph; but it appears as though the actual site, as shown, has not been always in one unvarying spot. (2) The well of Jacob, about a mile and a half from Nāblus on the way to Jerusalem, which is an excavation of great depth. The tradition fixing this hallowed place seems to have been constant throughout the whole of the Christian centuries, and it is one of the very few “holy places” shown to travellers and pilgrims in Palestine, the authenticity of which deserves consideration. It is one of the small number of sites mentioned by the Bordeaux pilgrim (A.D. 333).
The site of the sacred oak has been sought at two places: one called El-’Amūd, “the column”—where is “Joseph's tomb”; and the other at Balāta (a name containing the consonants of the Semitic word for “oak”), near Jacob's well. (R. A. S. M.)
SHED, (1) A small hut, shelter or outhouse, especially one with a “shed roof” or “lean-to,” a roof with only one set of rafters, falling from a higher to a lower wall, like an aisle roof. “Shed” is also the term applied to a large roofed shelter open at the sides for the storage of goods, rolling-stock, locomotives, &c., on a railway or dock-wharf. According to Skeat, the word is a Kentish form of “shade,” “shadow,” in O. Eng. scæd, sceadu, cf. Ger. Schatten; the ultimate origin is the root ska-, to cover, seen in Gr. σκιά, shadow, σκηνή, tent, shelter, stage, whence Eng. “scene”; the Eng. “sky” comes from a closely allied root sku, also to cover, cf. Lat. obscurus. (2) To spill, to scatter, to cast off; originally the word seems to have meant to part, to divide, a use only surviving in “watershed.” The O. Eng. verb was sceádan, in Mid. Eng. shæden, to divide, separate. “Shed” in the sense of to spill has, however, by some etymologists been taken to be a separate word from that meaning to part; it would in that case appear to be connected with O. Fris. schedda, to shake, the root of which is found in “shudder.”
SHEDD, WILLIAM GREENOUGH THAYER (1820-1894), American, Presbyterian, was born in Acton, Massachusetts, on the 21st of June 1820. In 1839 he graduated at the University of Vermont, and in 1843 at Andover Theological Seminary. After a short pastorate at Brandon, Vermont, he was successively professor of English literature in the University of Vermont (1845-1852), professor of sacred rhetoric in Auburn Theological Seminary (1852-1854), professor of church history in Andover Theological Seminary (1854-1862), and, after one year (1862-1863) as associate pastor of the Brick Church of New York City, of sacred literature (1863-1374) and of systematic theology (1874-1890) in Union Theological Seminary. He died in New York City on the 17th of November 1894.
Dr Shedd was a high Calvinist and was one of the greatest systematic theologians of the American Presbyterian church. His great work was Dogmatic Theology (3 vols., 1888-1894). He also wrote Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1856), in which he applied to history the doctrine of organic evolution; Discourses and Essays (1856); A Manual of Church History (2 vols., 1857), a translation of Guericke; A History of Christian Doctrine (2 vols., 1863); Theological Essays (1877); Literary Essays (1878); Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1879); The Doctrine of Endless Punishment (1885); and he edited Coleridge's Complete Works (7 vols., New York, 1894).
SHEE, SIR MARTIN ARCHER (1770-1850), English portrait-painter and president of the Royal Academy, was born in Dublin on the 23rd of December 1770. He was sprung from an old Irish family, and his father, a merchant, regarded the profession of a painter as no fit occupation for a descendant of the Shees. Young Shee became, nevertheless, a student of art in the Dublin Society, and came early to London, where he was, in 1788, introduced by Burke to Reynolds, by whose advice he studied in the schools of the Royal Academy. In 1789 he exhibited his first two pictures, the Head of an Old Man and Portrait of a Gentleman. During the next ten years he steadily increased in practice. He was chosen an associate of the Royal Academy in 1798, shortly after Flaxman, and in 1800 he was made a Royal Academician. In the former year he had married, removed to Romney's house in Cavendish Square, and set up as his successor. Shee continued to paint with great readiness of hand and fertility of invention, although his portraits were eclipsed by more than one of his contemporaries, and especially by Lawrence, Hoppner, Phillips, Jackson and Raeburn. The earlier portraits of the artist are carefully finished, easy in action, with good drawing and excellent discrimination of character. They show an undue tendency to redness in the flesh painting—a defect which is still more apparent in his later works, in which the handling is less “square,” crisp and forcible. In addition to his portraits he executed various subjects and historical works, such as Lavinia, Belisarius, his diploma picture Prospero and Miranda, and the daughter of Jephthah. In 1805 he published a poem consisting of Rhymes on Art, and it was succeeded by a second part in 1809. Byron spoke well of it in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, and invoked a place for "Shee and genius" in the temple of fame. Shee published another small volume of verses in 1814, entitled The Commemoration of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other Poems, but this effort did not greatly increase his fame. He now produced a tragedy called Alasco, of which the scene was laid in Poland. The play was accepted at Covent Garden, but Colman, the licenser, refused it his sanction, on the plea of its containing certain treasonable allusions, and Shee, in great wrath, resolved to make his appeal to the public. This violent threat he carried out in 1824, but Alasco is still on the list of unacted dramas. On the death of Lawrence in 1830, Shee was chosen president of the Royal Academy, and shortly afterwards he received the honour of knighthood. In the dispute regarding the use of rooms to be provided by the government, and in his examination before the parliamentary committee of 1836, he ably defended the rights of the Academy. He continued to paint till 1845, and died on the 13th of August 1850.
SHEEP (from the Anglo-Saxon sceáp, a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages; e.g. the German Schaf), a name originally bestowed in all probability on the familiar domesticated ruminant (Ovis aries), but now extended to include its immediate wild relatives. Although many of the domesticated breeds are hornless, sheep belong to the family of hollow-horned ruminants or Bovidae (q.v.). Practically they form a group impossible of definition, as they pass imperceptibly into the goats. Both sexes usually possess horns, but those of the females are small. In the males the horns are generally angulated, and marked by line transverse wrinkles; their colour being greenish or brownish. They are directed outwards, and curve in an open spiral, with the tips directed outwards. Although there may be a fringe of hair on the throat, the males have no beard on the chin; and they also lack the strong odour characteristic of goats. Usually the tail is short; and in all the wild species the coat takes the form of hair, and not wool. Like goats, sheep have narrow upper molar teeth, very different from those of the oxen, and narrow hairy muzzles. Between the two middle toes, in most species, is lodged a deep glandular bag having the form of a retort with a small external orifice, which secretes an unctuous and odorous substance. This, tainting the herbage or stones over which the animal walks, affords the means by which, through the powerfully developed sense of smell, the neighbourhood of other individuals of the species is recognized. The crumen or suborbital face-gland, which is so largely developed and probably performs the same office in some antelopes and deer, is present, although in a comparatively rudimentary form, in most species, but is absent in others. Wild sheep attain their maximum development, both in respect of number and size, in Central Asia. They associate either in large flocks, or in family-parties; the old males generally keeping apart from the rest. Although essentially mountain animals, sheep generally frequent open,
