COMAYAGUA

comayagua, the capital of the department of comayagua in central honduras, on the right bank of the river ulua, and on the interoceanic railway from puerto cortes to fonseca bay. pop. (1900) about 8000. comayagua occupies part of a fertile valley, enclosed by mountain ranges. under spanish rule it was a city of considerable size and beauty, and in 1827 its inhabitants numbered more than 18,000. a fine cathedral, dating from 1715, is the chief monument of its former prosperity, for most of the handsome public buildings erected in the colonial period have fallen into disrepair. the present city chiefly consists of low adobe houses and cane huts, tenanted by indians. the university founded in 1678 has ceased to exist, but there is a school of jurisprudence. in the neighbourhood are many ancient indian ruins (see central america: _archaeology_). founded in 1540 by alonzo caceres, who had been instructed by the spanish government to find a site for a city midway between the two oceans, valladolid la nueva, as the town was first named, soon became the capital of honduras. it received the privileges of a city in 1557, and was made an episcopal see in 1561. its decline dates from 1827, when it was burned by revolutionaries; and in 1854 its population had dwindled to 2000. it afterwards suffered through war and rebellion, notably in 1872 and 1873, when it was besieged by the guatemalans. in 1880 tegucigalpa (q.v.), a city 37 m. east-south-east, superseded it as the capital of honduras. comb (a word common in various forms to teut. languages, cf. ger. _kamm_, the indo-europ. origin of which is seen in [greek: gomphos], a peg or pin, and sanskrit, _gambhas_, a tooth), a toothed article of the toilet used for cleaning and arranging the hair, and also for holding it in place after it has been arranged; the word is also applied, from resemblance in form or in use, to various appliances employed for dressing wool and other fibrous substances, to the indented fleshy crest of a cock, and to the ridged series of cells of wax filled with honey in a beehive. hair combs are of great antiquity, and specimens made of wood, bone and horn have been found in swiss lake-dwellings. among the greeks and romans they were made of boxwood, and in egypt also of ivory. for modern combs the same materials are used, together with others such as tortoise-shell, metal, india-rubber and celluloid. there are two chief methods of manufacture. a plate of the selected material is taken of the size and thickness required for the comb, and on one side of it, occasionally on both sides, a series of fine slits are cut with a circular saw. this method involves the loss of the material cut out between the teeth. the second method, known as "twinning" or "parting," avoids this loss and is also more rapid. the plate of material is rather wider than before, and is formed into two combs simultaneously, by the aid of a twinning machine. two pairs of chisels, the cutting edges of which are as long as the teeth are required to be and are set at an angle converging towards the sides of the plate, are brought down alternately in such a way that the wedges removed from one comb form the teeth of the other, and that when the cutting is complete the plate presents the appearance of two combs with their teeth exactly inosculating or dovetailing into each other. in india-rubber combs the teeth are moulded to shape and the whole hardened by vulcanization.