e for sheep,
the staple commodity of the district; and the sainfoin, which grows
wild, yields abundantly under cultivation. The Cotteswolds have been
famous for the breed of sheep named from them since the early part of
the 15th century, a breed hardy and prolific, with lambs that quickly
put on fleece, and become hardened to the bracing cold of the hills,
where vegetation is a month later than in the vales. Improved by
judicious crossing with the Leicester sheep, the modern Cotteswold has
attained high perfection of weight, shape, fleece and quality. An
impulse was given to Cotteswold farming by the chartering in 1845 of the
Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester.

A number of small market-towns or large villages lie on the outskirts of
the hills, but in the inner parts of the district villages are few. The
"capital of the Cotteswolds" is Cirencester, in the east. In the north
is Chipping Campden, its great Perpendicular church and the picturesque
houses of its wide street commemorating the wealth of its wool-merchants
between the 14th and 17th centuries. Near this town, in the parish of
Weston-sub-Edge, Robert Dover, an attorney, founded the once famous
Cotteswold games early in the 17th century. Horse-racing and coursing
were included with every sort of athletic exercise from quoits and
skittles to wrestling, cudgels and singlestick. The games were
suppressed by act of parliament in 1851.

See _Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club, passim_;
W. H. Hutton, _By Thames and Cotswold_ (London, 1903).

COTTET, CHARLES (1863- ), French painter, was born at Puy. He studied
at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and under Puvis de Chavannes and Roll. He
travelled and painted in Egypt, Italy, and on the Lake of Geneva, but he
made his name with his sombre and gloomy, firmly designed, severe and
impressive scenes of life on the Brittany coast. His signal success was
achieved by his painting of the triptych, "_Au pays de la mer_," now at
the Luxembourg museum. The Lille gallery has his "Burial in Brittany."

COTTII REGNUM, a district in the north of Liguria, including a
considerable part of the important road which led over the pass (6119
ft.) of the Alpis Cottia (Mont Genevre) into Gaul. Whether Hannibal
crossed the Alps by this route is disputed, but it was certainly in use
about 100 B.C. (see PUNIC WARS). In 58 B.C. Caesar met with some
resistance on crossing it, but seems afterwards to have ente