NAST, THOMAS (184o-1902), American caricaturist, was born on Sept. 27, 1840, in Landau, Germany. His mother took him to New York in 1846. He studied art there with Theodore Kaufmann and at the school of the National Academy of Design. At the age of is he became a draughtsman for Frank Leslie's Illus trated Newspaper; three years later for Harper's Weekly. In 186o he went to England for the New York Illustrated News and soon afterwards joined Garibaldi in Italy as artist for The Illus trated London News. His first serious work was the cartoon "Peace" in 1862, directed against those in the North who op posed the prosecution of the Civil War. This and his other car toons during the Civil War and Reconstruction days were pub lished in Harper's Weekly; they attracted great attention, and Nast was called by President Lincoln "our best recruiting ser geant." Even more able were Nast's cartoons against the Tweed Ring conspiracy in New York city, his caricature of Tweed being the means of the latter's identification and arrest at Vigo. He had been an ardent Republican in his earlier years; but his advocacy of civil service reform and his distrust of Blaine forced him to become a Mugwump and in 1884 an open sup porter of the Democratic Party, from which in 1892 he returned to the Republican Party. He had lost practically all of his earnings by the failure of Grant and Ward, and in May, 1902, was appointed consul general at Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he died on Dec. 7, in the same year. He did some painting in oil and some book illustrations, but his fame rests on his caricatures and political cartoons. Nast introduced the donkey to typify the Democratic Party, the elephant to typify the Republican Party, and the tiger to typify Tammany Hall.
See A. B. Paine, Thomas Nast, his Period and his Pictures (1904). NASTURTIUM or INDIAN CRESS, Tropaeolum majus, a perennial climber, native of Peru, but in cultivation treated as a hardy annual. It climbs by means of the long stalk of the peltate leaf which is sensitive to contact like a tendril. The irregu lar flowers have five sepals united at the base, the dorsal one produced into a spur; of the five petals the two upper are slightly different and stand rather apart from the lower three ; the eight stamens are unequal and the pistil consists of three carpels which form a fleshy fruit. The flowers are sometimes eaten in salads, and the leaves and young green fruits are pickled in vinegar as a substitute for capers.
The dwarf form known as Tom Thumb (T. m. nanum), is an excellent bedding or border flower, growing about a foot high. Other fine annual tropaeolums are T. Lobbianum with long spurred orange flowers and numerous varieties; and T. minus, a kind of miniature T. majus with yellow, scarlet and crimson varieties.
The genus Tropaeolum (family Tropaeolaceae), native to South America and Mexico, includes about 5o species of generally climbing annual and perennial herbs with orange, yellow, rarely purple or blue, irregular flowers; A. peregrinum is the well-known canary creeper. The flame nasturtium with brilliant scarlet blos soms is T. speciosum from Chile; it has tuberous roots, as have also such well-known perennials as T. polyphyllum, T. penta phyllum. The Nasturtium of botanists is a genus of plants of the family Cruciferae; N. officinale is the water-cress.